Sleeping One Off In The Ivory Tower: August Kleinzahler's Collected Poetry

Originally issued in hardcover in April of 2008, the trade paperback edition was issued one year later and thus a viable choice for this list.

This is perhaps one of the books I most enjoyed reading and to tell the truth, have perhaps reread the most.

What kind of a poet is August Kleinzahler?

The typical Keillor selection tends to be anecdotal, wistful: more often than not a middle-aged creative writing instructor catching a whiff of mortality in the countryside — watching the geese head south, getting lost in the woods, this sort of thing.

-August Keleinzahler on Garrison Keillor's poetry anthology,Good Poems.

Enjoy.


Sleeping It Off In Rapid City: Poems, New and Selected by August Kleinzahler. FSG. Trade paperback. ISBN: 9780374531737. $16.

August Kleinzahler is a poet of diners with smoking sections and hotel bars. That is if the diner played Ravel and Coltrane and had a ready bottle of Chateau d’Armailhac Pauuillac. Let’s not get it wrong though: this is still a diner we’re talking about, and this particular one would be a favorite truck stop, known for a serviceable eggs Benedict. Strangely, the diner’s menu is spectacularly illustrated by Robert Hooke, famous for his drawing of a flea under the first microscope. The diner would also need to be nearby an airport, lending a transient feeling to nearly everyone and thing.

Sure, lovers are there, watching each other go but in Kleinzahler’s universe there is shrugging instead of a lamenting.

This metaphorical diner isn’t done yet. It would need to be a handful of blocks away from an old jazz club, where university students and grizzled old jazz vets mingle, get hammered and talk history with a capital “H”. Did I mention the decent booze? Well there’d be cheap stuff too. Plenty of that for talk of domestic politics.

Outside it might be raining, with a chilly fog blurring the lights of taxi cabs.

Or it might be brilliantly sunny, and the onlooker can easily see from their pastoral patio:

Red pear leaves take the light at four,
and a patch of brick on the south, rear wall.

Or perhaps the night is descending and charmingly you can behold:

Dogwood blossoms drift down at evening
as semis pound past Phoenix Seafood.

Better still let us look upon the stuff of scientific inspiration:

Good, patient Leeuwenhoek of Delft,
having “partook of hot smoked beef, that was a bit fat,
or ham,” of which he was most fond.

The scientific discovery? The same as the subject of the poem: “Microorganisms.” Patient Leewenhoek got diarrhea and decided to look into what caused it. Obscure? I’d say so. Funny? You bet.

Kleinzahler has had a long career, one that has touched base with some of the previous generation’s masters. The great British modernist poet, Basil Bunting, is often referred to by Klenzahler as his greatest teacher. There too is the time he spent in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco, which led to Allen Ginsberg’s notice and compliment, “August Kleinzahler's verse line is always precise, concrete, intelligent and rare…” Ginsberg goes on to sum up the then young poet, “A loner. A genius.”

Sleeping It Off In Rapid City is the first career spanning collection fo Kleinzahler’s poetry. Issued originally in hardcover in 2008, it won that year’s National Critic’s Circle Award. Though he is a poet worth a more thorough reading, this wonderfully organized collection, which includes some new material, is a great place to start.

Within any of the 234 pages of this book you will see Kleinzahler’s protean academic interests and raw, world-worn ability. A single poem can display beatnik homage to jazz, Robert Lowell-esque (pardon me) historical obscurity, subtle literary allusions and (always) a healthy dose of sardonic observations on everyday life, and its routine functions.

It all leads the reader to find the poem “accessible.” If you miss one aspect of the poem, there will always be another. There are many doors in the house of Kleinzahler. If Kleinzahler can’t poke your brain, he’ll waft the smell of cheap, greasy but good food across your nose. If that doesn’t phase you he’ll remind you of the low life, of sleeping off hangovers and temporal frailties in our relationships. If still unfazed, he will point out the absurdity of modern life – the falling petals and roaring semis of Northeastern boulevards. If all else fails he’ll tell you a joke, probably dirty.

It’s rare to find so much in one place, and this belies a poet who has lived as much as he’s looked.

Essentially, reading a Kleinzahler poem is like being invited to a party at an eccentric genius’s house. As a host, he’ll pours you glass after glass of fine wine, but later on when he gets the munchies, he’ll ask you if you’d like a hot dog, since he’s microwaving a couple. It’s conflicting, sophisticated and ruggedly charming.

In other words: it’s essential American poetry and one of the best publications of the year.