By CB Follett
Many Voices Press proudly announces the publication of And Freddie Was My Darling, a collection of poems by CB Follet. Her book, At the Turning of the Light, won the 2001 National Poetry Book Award from Salmon Run Press. She has also been nominated numerous times for Pushcart Prizes, and she has received the Ann Stanford Prize, New Press Literary Quarterly poetry contest, Robert Winner Award, George Bogin Award, Billee Murray Denny Prize, among many others. She is also a recipient of a grant from the Marin Arts Council. And Freddie Was My Darling is CB Follett’s sixth poetry collection.
Poet Susan Terris writes: “With her usual penetrating insights, CB Follet tells us of Freddie, the boy love of her youth. Follet’s poems are supple and poignant. They radiate with a kind of innocence the world has lost. This book will make you laugh and cry — sometimes at the same time. It will surprise you into remembering the wild, silly, yearning person you used to be. Read it.”
Poet David St. John writes: “Like a superb ballad made up of unraveling verses, each chronicling a girl’s coming of age, CB Follet’s utterly charming and often heart-breaking new book, And Freddie Was My Darling, reminds us that of all passages in one’s life, the passage into sexuality and young adulthood is the most exciting and the most disorienting as well. Part historical family album, part mischievous memoir, this collection boasts a refrain in the form of a person — the Freddie of the title — who is one of the few constant male figures in the speaker’s life. This compelling catalogue of memories and reflections reminds us of the losses we endure and the loves we carry with us into our separate futures. Though she may not wish to share him, CB Follet has made Freddie our darling too.”
The Midwest Poetry Review said of CB Follet’s earlier book, Hold and Release: “an accomplished poetry of considerable imagination and an undeniable flare for language, Follet’s unique style of engagement is to be admired, even savored, poem by poem and verse by verse. “