Great Regulars: [Lola Ridge] is a terrific poet,

in both senses of that word. The title sequence of her first book, The Ghetto and Other Poems, takes an energized, head-on look at the old Lower East Side. Ridge sees the Yiddish-speaking tenements and pushcarts directly, from that time (1918) and from inside that place. Ridge's way of making a poem about the ghetto scrubs away any accumulated nostalgia or sentimentality: "Hester street,/Like a forlorn woman over-born/By many babies at her teats,/Turns on her trampled bed to meet the day."

from Robert Pinsky: Slate: Street Poet

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