Norma Chapman

Perris, California Norma Chapman

Poetry. Norma Chapman's PERRIS, CALIFORNIA is pungent truth-telling, peopled by a call-girl cousin, ditzy aunts, grandmothers, lovers, her mother and father ('the fifth husband of his second wife'), in a voice unique to the time and this poet, the voice of a laconic rapier. These poems, often arising from the Great Depression and WWII, entertain, elucidate a life few readers will recognize, but all will revel in.--Gregg McBride

In her uncompromising gaze at the realities of age and life and death, Chapman's poems reveal the immense vitality of a lively mind and give no quarter to the solemn pieties.--Jean Norhaus