Public Employee Press

Retiree James Goldiner
A union Caseworker and a poet

James Goldiner worked as a Caseworker for 37 years and has been writing poetry even longer. Now retired for 10 years, the Local 371 member started writing in 1962.

Famed poet William Carlos Williams, a family doctor in Paterson, N.J., who used the colloquial English of regular Americans, inspired Goldiner and showed him that "I should always keep my day job and it didn't have to be something academic."

Connecting to clients in home care facilities, Goldiner found that "there was always the talking and the listening to understand them." He sought to help them during the day and later captured them in his poems.

To protect their privacy, he said, "I wrote about their experiences with careful alterations. The people in these poems had substance and eaning for me. In my poems it's usually an emotional and intellectual mix that will start something going."

Over the years, Goldiner has published in small literary magazines, but his recent book, "Cracks in the Concrete," is a collection.

It includes poems about everyday life and the diffi cult lives of his clients, such as "Even Royalty Finds It Rough Going Sometimes" and Everybody's Luck Runs Out."

Captures the essence

Goldiner writes with sensitivity and emotional power about simple things - love, nature, sharing a Saturday on the Jersey side of the Hudson, or a trip to dispose of his parents' ashes. But it's the poems about those who fell through the cracks that will grip you.

Like Phoebe Snow's hit "Poetry Man," you know that Goldiner is someone you want to "talk to me some more" to "make everything all right."

Members can borrow the book at the DC 37 Ed Fund library, Room 211.

—Jane LaTour