|
The Buffalo Shoot
Copyright © 1974
by Greg Kuzma
Basilisk
|
At his best, Kuzma is alert to landscape and rhythms of process, a
landbound
creature alive with the processes of living. — Sam Hamill,
Margins
|
|
Good News
Copyright © 1994
by Greg Kuzma
Carnegie-Mellon UP
|
If there is a key poem in [Kuzma's] collection Good News, it is
"Advice on Reading the Confessional Poet." Although Kuzma is reacting
against
the excesses of the confessional poets, the poem also indicates a
distaste for
autobiography and self-revelation. He does not parade his secrets before
the reader; instead he writes poems which are warm, tender, full of good
humor,
often sensitive, highly crafted with a sheen akin to that of minimal art.
— John R Carpenter, Poetry
In titling his book Good News, Greg Kuzma confirms his wish to have
the book be "generous and affirmative." But that good, generous affirmative
news and wish prove to be part of a larger movement which is not afraid to
encounter and embrace things of weight and density of another
kind — the floor that cannot be divided up in a parental divorce
settlement,
a howling in the hills, jealously for secret lives of other we cannot
intrude
upon except as voyeurs. And it is these complexities of intention which
define
the book and make it an important one. ... The poems in Good News
... show the poet telling us about himself in ways that are intimate and
fabulous at the same time. What Kuzma does not want to do very soon becomes
clear. He does not want to make us feel safe. He does not want to confess.
He
does not want words to sound clever on his tongue. And what he does not want
relates strategically to what he wants. He wants to engage us. He wants to
witness and to bear witness to. He wants to recreate, rediscover, and
rewrite — to reuse possible words for flower and woman, say
"nasturtium" and "wife." ... Kuzma's poetry is fresh, sexual, and confident.
— Arthur Oberg, Shenandoah
|
|
McKeever Bridge
Copyright © 2002
by Greg Kuzma
Sandhills P
|
Greg Kuzma has long been one of our most widely published poets. ...
McKeever Bridge recollects two very significant collections
from the
late 1970s, early 1980s — A Problem of High Water and
Adirondacks — as well as brings in additional, previously
uncollected poems.
These poems, dark as they are, find
Kuzma at his most consistent, certainly his most haunting, his most
reflective, and he's most at home inside his very personal discomfort.
... He makes a journey through the darkness, over the edge of the
woods, into the dark water to find he can weather it all and
return.
This is Kuzma at his highest, brightest, most sensitive point of
poetic creativity — an indispensable collection. — from the
jacket
|
Wind Rain and Stars
and the Grass Growing
Copyright © 1993
by Greg Kuzma
Orchises P
|
Greg Kuzma's poems are blunt and sometimes rude. The surprise of their
ideas and images — with pain as close as it is to comedy —
often causes
abrupt, uncomfortable laughter. In "The Practical Necessities of Kingship,"
a kingdom is destroyed by its ruler because of its imperfections, leaving
the
king to bow to the will of his realm only after he has done away with them
all. In "Grandmother," a woman's disastrous edging toward the end of her
life culminates in having to live with her sister, "snarling over their
chicken
wings." But these magnificent counterpoints, mistakes, and quibbling are as
much a part of life as clouds, hills, and daffodils. — Independent
Presses, Editor's Recommended Book, 12/15/97
|
What the Critics Say
Bibliography
