An Introduction To The Poems And Essays Of Frank Finale

by Rich Youmans

Like one of his favorite poets, Frank Finale sees “the World in a Grain of Sand.” His stories and poems abound with telling details, exquisitely told: the “cuneiform tracks of gulls” joining his own along a strand; a common egret spied in a salt marsh, “a bit of summer snow against the tall reeds”; the “aroma of sausage, peppers and onions, and God-knows-what sauces” drifting along a crowded boardwalk... Frank measures time through these moments and through them lifts and relocates the reader. This is the essence of Frank’s gift as a writer and poet: by evoking the often-overlooked details of life, he enables others to see a place—no matter how familiar—as if for the first time.

Rereading these pieces now, I too am transported—not only to various locales of the Jersey Shore, but also to those many nights I spent with Frank at his mahogany dining room table, reading these pieces for the first time. From 1986 to 1991, I served as Frank’s primary editor at COAST Magazine, where most of these pieces first appeared. I had known Frank prior to this collaboration; we first met in 1984, when I wrote a story about Frank that appeared in COAST in August 1985. I subsequently joined a local poetry group to which he belonged, and a friendship soon developed. The first time I read one of Frank’s poems, I immediately recognized his facility with language—which is like saying I immediately recognized a twenty-foot-high neon billboard on a deserted highway. But it wasn’t until the “COAST years” that I fully grasped Frank’s power as a writer, when he began turning out essays that quickly became reader favorites.

The first essay Frank wrote, “Winter Still Lifes,” (November/December 1986) actually stemmed from a request I made for a Christmas poem that could appear in the magazine’s “Port O’ Call” column. I remember telling him that the piece should be a narrative with good-old fashioned Christmas charm—”maybe something with an elf.” Perhaps the addition of the elf proved the ultimate obstacle, but Frank could not produce the Clement Moore piece I envisioned (thank God). He did, however, produce a thoroughly modern essay/prose poem whose few vignettes—from the selection of the family Christmas tree to the ice skating party with “blurs of bright clothes sliding by”—leave the reader feeling exhilarated and celebratory.

That first essay spawned many more for COAST—so many, in fact, that several readers thought Frank’s last name had to be a pun, since his essays always appeared on the magazine’s back page. (Suffice it to say, Finale is his real name.) I had the privilege of working with Frank on almost all of these pieces, and our editing sessions are still among my favorite memories: Frank and I seated at the dining table, poetry books and literary journals piled at one end; Frank’s wife, Barbara (his other editor), grading school papers in the living room; their cat, Shadow, maneuvering around the books and journals with the grace of a second-story man, continually demanding attention. Eventually, Barb would come in and join us, and the night usually ended with all of us gabbing around the table, with Shadow in my lap and another Port O’ Call essay in hand.

Some of the pieces Frank wrote are rooted in his youth: the childhood gift of a Lionel train, a white milk car with seven silver cans; his early summer job helping to build houses at the Shore, when he learned to drive a nail into a two-by-four with three swift strokes; the summer after he turned twenty-one, when he drank martinis and busboyed at Martell’s in Point Pleasant Beach. Many take their cue from episodes as a husband and father, or as a teacher in the Toms River School System. Others reflect his intense interest in nature. (Two of his favorite books are “A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” by Annie Dillard and “The Immense Journey” by Loren Eiseley, classics in the field.)

Yet all of the essays, no matter the topic, derive from Frank’s real-life experiences. In most, you see the importance of family in Frank’s life: the outings with his children, whether to an apple farm or to an abandoned summer lot; his adventures with Barb, including a memorable kiss on a snowy boardwalk in Seaside Heights; the family Christmas in which distant church bells echo as the Finale children, wildly pedaling in circles, jingle the bells of their new tricycles. Frank has that rare ability to express sentiment without sentimentality, and many of his best pieces are woven from the ties between parents, spouses, and children.

Several essays also reflect Frank's interest in (to quote another of his favorite poets) “this great wink of eternity.” Frank has a strong mystical side; from the small creatures that hide in bracken salt marshes to the great sweep of ocean under a procession of stars, he finds awe in the immensity of the universe, as well as inspiration. “I was struck by the preciousness of life in all its varied forms and exalted in being part of that procession,” he writes in this book’s title piece. That pretty much sums up Frank: he exalts in life, and has tried to capture it—in all its varied forms—on paper.

“Nature attracts me,” he once told me, “but not the bluebirds-and-flowers type. It’s the really amazing and fabulous things, like a cat. If you were from another planet and first saw an animal like the cat, you’d say, ‘What an amazing creature!' It purrs, it has claws that can retract—just so many different things. And what is man but a part of nature, anyway?”

The quote is from the story I wrote about Frank back in 1984, and it remains one of my favorites to this day. It shows the unique perspective Frank brings to his writing, which has made his work so evocative, insightful, and memorable. I could say much more, but it’s time to let the author speak for himself. Read these stories now, and see if you don’t find yourself echoing the closing of that first essay: “I am glad to be alive...in this land, at this moment.” For my part, I hope Frank Finale brings us many more moments in the years to come.