Iggy Horse

by Michael Earl Craig

In Michael Earl Craig’s sixth book, poems resonate with an inscrutable logic that feels excitedly otherworldly and unsettlingly familiar. Whether he be writing about the cadaver that Hans Holbein the Younger used as a model, Montana as the “Italy of God,” or the milking rituals in Kelly Reichardt’s  First Cow ,  Iggy Horse  is a book that articulates the sadness and strangeness of American life with the poetic observations of true satire.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

Published April 4, 2023

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A flood/ of thoughts came randomly, images and emotions all at once,/ and he opened a carton of noodles." The Salesman Had Two Bags

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently read Iggy Horse, Michael Earl Craig’s new poetry collection. There’s so much swirling in Craig’s work; reading his poetry is like stepping sideways into a world that looks just like our own, but somehow, everything is brought into a brighter focus: the edges are a little sharper, the details thrown into relief.

There’s a repetition throughout of people caught in moments of “before” – before the rain, before the return of a loved one, before sleep; a sense of liminal, transitional experiences pervades his poetry, his subjects sketched in moments of preparation, thinking, and pause. “Preparing to Paint the Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb,” with its contrast of actions preceding the portrait, is a stunning vignette of anticipation and arrival.

Strangers brush against one another’s lives, such as in “Somewhere Over Greenland” and “The Train” (which made me laugh out loud: when is the last time a poem has sparked sheer grinning delight like that?); beautiful moments of connection are punctuated by an off-kilter, understated humor, even as melancholy simmers in the background.

I found myself revisiting “Saint Finbar, Burbank,” “The Red Mitten,” and “Everyone Knew Her As Marsha”: Craig captures scenes with an evocative immediacy that stops you dead on the page; you don’t go on – you just go back to the start of it again, to relive the experience and turn over the words in your mind. He wrings more weight out of single words than novelists flog out of a hundred pages of prose (see: the minimalistic, subversive, hypnotic chanting of “Chocolate Santa”).

He's so damn good at what he does that I read this and just shook my head in appreciation.

But no review is complete without mentioning the absolute jewel of “Wallace Stevens Hesitating Before an Evening of Playing Bridge.” I guffawed, found my husband, and insisted on reading it aloud to him. I can’t think of a higher compliment to a poem than that: it delighted me so much that I had to instantly share it with someone else.

Big thank you to Wave Poetry for the gifted copy! When I saw that Craig had a new book out, they were very kind to a random poetry-lover who frantically emailed them to request a copy. Craig's work is everything I like; his poems have their hook in me. I can’t recommend his work enough: get this one as quick as you can.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

CHEMISTRY

They came from different worlds,
met at a masked ball, suffered
from different degrees of jet lag.
She was a sturdy woman, a religious woman,
she worked at the sawmill slabbing redwoods.
He was a fussy man, a tiny man,
a CPA with a deep love of birding.
She sometimes faked a limp, citing
the limp as a gateway to chastity.
He was a man prone to burying his head,
unburying his head,
burying his head,
unburying his head-
something he'd always associated
with irrational numbers.
She said her greatest pleasure in life
was to give a complete stranger a bath.
He had a mother he affectionately
called The Dock, who was constantly
almost completely surrounded by water.
He wore a suit made of feathers.
She wore clogs hewed from hardwoods
that knocked nicely on marble.
They took to the dance floor.
He touched her hand. She touched his cheek.

[Jared Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

—he looked through me at the Big Nothing in the woods. And I let him.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Earlier this year in Seattle, I had the pleasure of hearing Michael Earl Craig read this book front-to-back. It was a recorded event, and I had my copy, quietly following along and reading along for the first time. It's his sixth collection and it's as refreshing and playful and tender and madcap as ever (and always so deeply focused on the line). Iggy Horse further cements Craig as one of my favorite living poets.

[Lola Anaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

i read this book in an hour and it was really great. the ekphrastic poems really stood out to me and even the short poems still captured so much in just 3-5ish lines.