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For My Son in a Motel Room
Copyright © 1999
by Greg Kosmicki
Sandhills Press
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Through this book of poetry Kosmicki reveals his soul's yearnings toward his son.
As a father who dedicates himself to embracing his son, he strengthens the bond that
exists between them. He also realizes that being a father means he has to let go
enough to allow the boy to become his own man. — Patricia Troutman,
Nebraska Territory
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Nobody Lives Here
Who Saw This Sky
Copyright © 1998
by Greg Kosmicki
Missing Spoke Press
How to Buy
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United Parcel in these poems is a capitalist Gulag, and
Kosmicki its resident alien. Written on packages and
routing slips, written on the wind, Greg's poems steal
time from the daily exile and solitary confinement of his job. Always
the fear lives in him, that he will become too tired to
care, too blind to see. ... Two desperations, then, inform
these poems. The panic to fulfill one's duties, to keep to
the murderous schedule — bringing the paycheck home, and
that other desperation — not to die as a poet. To heed the small
things, little birds in the road — crushed against
the windshield, prairie dogs along the route, not yet
poisoned by efficient ranchers. ... Even the smallest poems
here resonate within the matrix — Greg's son Mark
off on his first unassisted bike ride — trying to find
that difficult balance — while his father reflects
on his own struggles. ... In form various, but always urgent —
as if not written at all but spoken — made furious
by the headlong rush of the road, these poems startle and amaze.
— Greg Kuzma
Thanks for the book. A hell of a lot
of good stuff there, truly — strong and
recognizable and full of right feeling. It'd be a pleasure to read it
in any case, but it's doubly so alongside the deluge of bullshit
that inundates me day in and day out. Keep up the good work.
— Hayden Carruth
Kosmicki takes the ordinary, small things in life (wildlife,
gardening, and tumbleweeds)
and transforms them into something magical, even electric. —
Bruce R Nelson, Grassroots
Greg Kosmicki tells it like it is. All but the luckiest among us are forced to toil at
jobs that kill our creativity and hope. That the heart of this poet survived to share
his thoughts with readers is a gift. — Laurel Johnson, Midwest Book Review
This collection of poems by Omaha-based Greg Kosmicki
reflects a brilliance that can only be captured by a man who
chooses to record those occurrences in life that most people
would catalogue as "everyday." Within these poems about
work and working, family and living are pieces of wisdom
Kosmicki has picked up through his routes as a driver for UPS
and through his life experiences as father, husband, son and
brother. — Amazon.com
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The Patron Saint of the Lost and Found
Copyright © 2003
by Greg Kosmicki
Lone Willow Press
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The Patron Saint of the Lost and Found is Greg Kosmicki's latest chapbook, exploring
lost and found relationships, entities, and items. ... Readers connect with his poetry as
it is relaxed, based in Nebraska ways. We recognize the familiar ways in Kosmicki's poetry
and are led to a new understanding of their significance. — Gerry Cox,
The NCB News
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Some Hero of the Past
Copyright © 2006
by Greg Kosmicki
Word Press
How to Buy
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Beneath the jaunty surface of the poems in Greg Kosmicki's Some Hero of the Past
are the tales of survivors of the everyday. The inhabitants of Kosmicki's poems struggle
and persevere, celebrate and mourn, and live to tell the tale again. These are the most
essential kind of heroes. — from the publisher
In this new collection, Greg Kosmicki meanders through remnants of a passionate life as
if on a quest at a jumble sale. Never fooled by global hype, he rescues what has been
junked or refurbished, holding up to the light what has no price. In this day of hotmail
and blogs, Kosmicki is a poet of wily humility–worthy guide to what is soulful and
American. — CarolAnn Russell
A Kosmicki poem is often nocturnal, although you wouldn't exactly call it a nocturne.
It makes you feel aware and in the moment as you sit up late at night, reading poems,
listening to the voices in your house, hearing them call to you, "Are you coming to bed
yet?" And so you lie and say, "Just a minute, just as soon as I am finished reading
this Kosmicki poem." You pretend it's some kind of obligation, but really you want to
stay up, because when you read a Kosmicki poem you are so completely in the present
that you almost feel you are with him as he composes, watching the words wind their
way down the page, listening to the wind and traffic and "the crickets outside keeping up
their / solitary notes in unison / with all the other creatures making /nighttime noise."
And, sure, maybe you dread going into work tomorrow. Maybe you feel foolish to stay up
this late with nothing more than a poem as an excuse, but at least you know are in good
company. And so you stay up a little while more, because a Kosmicki poem often inspires
you to step outside and listen to the most distant sound you can, which you would if that
damned cricket would just shut up! But then you ease up. You remember that the Kosmicki
poem would never damn the cricket, and its humble instruction stays with you. Sometimes
you wonder how the Kosmicki poem manages to keep its good humor, its generosity of spirit.
In recent years, in our sad country, the native habitat of the Kosmicki poem has been
reduced just to "a strip of dirt / between a concrete street and an asphalt/ parking lot."
Nevertheless, it offers to share what remains. — Ron Block
You've seen them — the pitchers who are all wind-up and no pitch.
And perhaps you've seen the other ones, those who take all day to wind-up and who can
throw too. I think of Warren Spahn — it was a long time before he got his arms and
legs all unfolded and the ball released, and when he did it would be quite a pitch.
Greg Kosmicki writes that way. He is the Warren Spahn of poets. He's never in a hurry to get the point of the poem out
there, and when he does it's worth waiting for. These are not "talky" poems, these poems
in his recent collection, Some Hero of the Past,* but neither is there the urgency and
compression you come to expect in poetry. Kosmicki lets the poem take its own good time.
Folks who get scared off poetry because it slaps them up right off will appreciate
Kosmicki's manner. He lulls you into the poem. Usually I don't have much time for
poetry that isn't strung tight, but Kosmicki's poems convince me otherwise: the going
itself, the journey to the point, is part of the point in his poems. These loose-limbed
lines couldn't be more different from the kind I write, yet I am enchanted.
Tom Montag, The
Middlewesterner (
http://middlewesterner.typepad.com/middlewesterner/2006/10/some_hero_of_th.html)
I have read the book with real pleasure. It is good to see you still working with the same
smirking objectivity that attracted me to your poems in the beginning. "Christmas Day,
2002" is a very superior poem, a stand-out and a terrifically moving structure of
language. And so are a good number of other poems. Keep it up. — Hayden Carruth
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Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace
Copyright © 2002
by Greg Kosmicki, Marjorie Saiser,
and Lisa Sandlin (eds)
Backwaters Press
How to Buy
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Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace is a collection of poetry, fiction, and memoir by women
writers from the Great Plains/High Plains region of the US, including such notes authors and
poets as Jonis Agee, Marilyn Krysl, Judith Minty, Mary Pipher, Hilda Raz, CarolAnn Russel,
Judith Sornberger, Laurel Speer, Gladys Swan, and SL Wisenberg. — from the jacket
From the visually stunning cover to the black and white wildflower drawings and eye pleasing
font, this anthology is a keeper.
It is a map of secret journeys to be shared, read and reread. — Midwest Book Review
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What the Critics Say
Bibliography
