Yes, Master

by Michael Earl Craig

In his second book, Michael Earl Craig blurs the line between the documentary and imaginative impulses. The resulting poems mutilate pastoral myths—a man who has ignored horses his whole life but now wants to try touching one, or two gay donkeys and their uneventful lives on the high plains—but also pay tribute to the current-day West in which Craig lives.

Genres: Poetry, Literary Fiction

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[M. Sarki · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/8482536...

Last year, two winters ago, I discovered Michael Earl Craig by accident. I was either researching David Foster Wallace or there was an interview of Gordon Lish in this magazine called The Believer published out of, I believe, San Francisco. And featured in whatever issue I am talking about here was a poem by Michael Earl Craig. I liked the poem enough to order his only two, at this time, published books of poetry as I am want to do when my obsessive/compulsive disorder kicks in which it does so very often. So I get these two books and I like them okay enough to have them stay on my bedside table for the last year and a half. Michael Earl Craig has been on my list of people to write an article about simply because he has stayed at my side for so long. There isn't a whole lot to know about the dude. I really haven't known what to say until now, or even how to say it. In other words, I have lacked a good idea, or even a word, which is an important place to start in any composition.

CAN YOU RELAX IN MY HOUSE is Craig's first book of verse and was published by Fence Books in 2002. I have read through the book at least two times, if not three, and I have always been taken by the poem Montgomery. I think to myself that this is the poem I would highlight in this book if it was mine, and then being not at all surprised I notice it is the poem the editor chose to be featured on the back cover of the book. In 2006 Craig's second book of verse came out by Fence Books and was titled, YES, MASTER. The poem I always remember in this book is the initial one, This Is How An Anvil Comes To You. Now I am neither going to explain what I like about these two poems, nor deconstruct them. None of the poems from either two books beat the best of Gilbert, Allen, or even myself if you will allow me this one indiscretion. Of course the poems of Michael Earl Craig also cannot compete with Wallace Stevens or Emily Dickinson either. But that is not to say that Craig is not worth reading. His poems are honest even if he's lying. He's a man with a hard and dangerous job who still manages to get out of himself as a farrier and into his art when time permits. There is meaning in Michael Earl Craig, and by gum, that says a lot about a person.

[Bryan Coleman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes Master is truly a mix between comedy and seriousness. Though the 50 poems in this book center around landscape and farm work, they veer wildly from romanticized notions of farm life toward threatening, obsessive, and even bizarrely surreal narratives.

There are gay donkeys, a fierce boxing match between hawk and rabbit and constant judgments from opinionated horses. Craig's narrator knows what he is doing with the poems, offering trickery and confusion, and sometimes indifference. In one poem, a man holding a shotgun over the speaker complains, "You poets are always sad./That's about all you can do is be sad." At times, Craig rejects his audience completely: "I will pull the blinds/on you, reader. Good bye." Each poem is stacked with absurd reverie, cinematic observations and hilarious, winking descriptions.

Yes, Master merges autobiography, creativity, and poetry into a free-verse collection of short, often comical, and sometimes wistful poetry. Often pausing amid reflections to cleverly contemplate the role of everyday objects, from an anvil to a soft black derby to marvelously designed wristwatches, Yes, Master observes the mundane and reveals that the whole of daily life is much more than its seemingly ordinary parts.

[Victoria Elmore · Rating 2 out of 5]

Michael Earl Craig's collection of short, comical, but sometimes melancholy poetry, considers the role of everyday objects - a new anvil, a black derby "soft as a colt's nose," a series of wristwatches - revealing that daily life on the farm is more than just the sum of its seemingly mundane parts.

The poems focus on rural landscape and farm work, though consistently depart from expectations of pastoral poetry, painting surreal narratives from commercialized views of farm life.

I loved the way Craig’s poetry departed from the expected, dabbling in homosexuality of farm animals, inter-species boxing matches, and many other unanticipated depictions of life in the West. I found his original take on bucolic myths both humorous and enlightening.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Talkativeness and Thin Kimono, two later books, before this one, and iced those two books better. This has more deliberate joking, as in the Jaques Tati cover and the allusion to s/m in the title (and no connection to any of the poems, of course). He writes about his work as farrier and also about his work as poet. Some poems are great here, and none of it is boring, but in those two other books, there is more exhilaration.

[Tao · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this book.

Michael Earl Craig is a nice person.

[Gene · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don't ever get annoyed by this book.

[rfan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his second book, Michael Earl Craig blurs the line between the documentary and imaginative impulses. The resulting poems mutilate pastoral myths—a man who has ignored horses his whole life but now wants to try touching one, or two gay donkeys and their uneventful lives on the high plains—but also pay tribute to the current-day West in which Craig lives.

[Matt McBride · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are certain singers for whom I say, "I could listen to them read a menu." Craig is the poetic equivalent of that. I'm just interested in seeing anything transformed by the raw light of his imagination.

[Cipriyani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of these poems confuse me, but all of them are beautiful / Every night before bed, I close my eyes and pray to EVER write a poem as good as "The Accomplished Hand"

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was impressed by the balance between the funny and the serious in Yes, Master. The dedications and the opening start the book off in a comical, light-hearted way. Even so, as one continues reading further, it becomes obvious that Craig addresses serious issues such as depression and therapy. He does so humbly (at least in my opinion), without over-dramatizing or making it the primary point. I also enjoyed the numerous accounts of simple objects and beings that would normally go unconsidered. By personifying and giving deeper meaning to such mundane things, Craig also gives us a peak at his western lifestyle. My favorite piece was “My situation; a confession; some hopes that I have” in that it starts off negatively and emotionally charged and ends in more quiet way. I feel this book started and ended with the appropriate poems, which definitely gave it a more cohesive nature as a collection of poems. I enjoyed most of the stuff in between, too.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Craig's voice over the course of this little book ends up being beautiful. It's a process where the coaxing and cuteness dry out over the timecourse of the read, giving way to the weakness underneath; the flippant references to Christopher Walken, Red Bull and HBO that seem more like nervous name-dropping than careful cultural positioning, these end up building a strange plastic nest for "He walked like a foster child" and "horses / running away from me at a great distance". This definitely seems like a read from the Plains. I just couldn't stand the strategy of having the writing take over the writer, of allowing the reader to be subjected to something indirect before letting them 'get in'. Seems disrespectful. I didn't like the Giono quotation at the beginning, which seemed to paint this voice ('sleeping during the day') as heroic. It is innovative, as far as I know, but not successful--too messy.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Craig uses poetry to explore even the most mundane and ordinary of subjects. Many of his poems seem to follow the inner workings of his head as he jumps from everyday thought to everyday thought--the poem "Ways of Dealing" is a conglomeration of his random musings as he sprawls across the couch. There are several themes that tie together the book, such as horses and anvils, which recur a number of times in different poems. However, I found some poems to be a little too scattered for me and preferred pieces like "April" that had a loose theme of a girl he used to know. Overall, however, Craig's wandering style was amusing and made even darker topics seem lighter and just part of everyday life.

[Rebecca Tassell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not being a poetically inclined person, I found it hard to understand what Michael Earl Craig was trying to get across in some of his poems. They were comedic and light-hearted (usually), and represented his life in the West. He obviously has a thing for humor, horses, and inanimate objects and has no limit on how absurd he will get. The way he writes so seriously about things such as watches, anvils, and hatchets should come off as humorous to the readers. I enjoyed his semi-autobiographical poems, such as “The Interview”, where it seems as if he is talking to a psychiatrist. Hopefully by re-reading this book, I will be able to enjoy it more.

[Marco · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked some of the lighthearted poems in this collection, especially those dealing with animals. He used humor well to convey his ideas in a subtle way. I thought some of his poems, such as "I'll fight depression for you," were not as strong because of his use of weak verbs and unnecessary words (in my opinion).

[Brian Foley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An orgy of most everything I enjoy about writing. Flippant humor, rampant objectification, lonesome days. I will run back into the burning house for this.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Albert Often Cracked His Knuckles" was my favorite. Great cover art.

[Cary · Rating 5 out of 5]

So so good. It's like I've been hiding inside my own body for a long time. ' "No Albert, this isn't your mother." ' Michael Earl Craig is not my mother.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

he's smart, he's funny, and he has excellent taste!

[Hooper Bring]

The first time I tried to read this book earlier this year, a violent outbreak of lice interrupted my nighttime reading. Ever since then I've avoided this book even though it seemed good. It was irrational- I'm pretty sure lice can't live in a book- but whenever I would consider picking it up these last few months, my head would start itching. I decided to suck it up today. And for awhile my head was itching so badly I was sure that I had been loused again. But pretty quickly I was so engrossed in the language and world of this book that I was able to forget the phantom lice.