Just Above Water: Prose Poems

by Louis Jenkins

Several of these poems are included in the performance script of NICE FISH, the play.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1997

About the author

Louis Jenkins was an American prose poet .He lived in Duluth, Minnesota, with his wife Ann for over four decades. His poems have been published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies. Jenkins was a guest on A Prairie Home Companion numerous times and was also featured on The Writer's Almanac.

Reviews

[Marjie C-O · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 I really wanted to like it. Expected to like it. This book was recommended to me by a lovely person and I am a poetry lover. Perhaps prose poetry isn't my thing or maybe Mary Oliver's brilliance has set the bar impossibly high. Either way, aside from a few glimmers, these left me shaking my head and unmoved.

[Alarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally I avoid books of prose poems. Granted, if I heard them at poetry readings, I might not realize they’re prose poems, but I prefer the ruffled margins and deliberate choices made in line breaks of free verse. Many prose poems seem to me to be compact essays or flash fiction. In Louis Jenkins’ skilled hands, I can forget about labels and simply enjoy reading. Some of these poems are snapshots of a scene, some more narrative, but there’s almost always a wink or chuckle tucked in. However, I wouldn’t call this light poetry. Often Jenkins smiles at life’s absurdity as a way to cope with the hard stuff like aging, loss, and Minnesota winters. In “The Skiff,” we share a sudden, horrifying shock with the author, but I won’t spoil the surprise here.

A night owl myself, I especially enjoyed his description in “Three A.M.”: “The god of three a.m. is the god of the dripping faucet, sirens, and barking dogs….He is a minor functionary, a troll that lives under a bridge.”

[Sean Sexton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of prose poems by Louis Jenkins, who lives in Duluth, Minnesota. These are wonderful short poems about all kinds of daily adventures and experiences. They are the sort of poems that you read and then immediately look around for someone to read them out loud to.

[Seth the Zest · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant set of prose poems that helped me relax. The poems focus on the strangeness of the mundane with an eye to Winter in particular.

[D'Anne · Rating 1 out of 5]

If Louis Jenkins really is "the contemporary master" of the prose poem, as Robert Bly attests on the back cover of Just Above Water, that's hardly a rousing endorsement of the genre. While there is nothing terrible about the poems in this book, there is nothing wonderful, either. I found most of the poems to be, well, boring. Reading this book felt a lot like listening to a record by Morrissey. It wasn't a painful experience, but the songs all sound pretty much the same. The tone, subject matter and even the length of most of the poems in this book just doesn't change much from poem to poem. The poems themselves are neither clever or emotionally resonant enough to be memorable or worth ever reading again. Overall, I think the poems in this book would make a fine accompaniment to the artwork of Thomas Kinkade. (Sorry KC).

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm loving Louis Jenkins' work more and more. Also getting some good ideas for the upcoming Poetry event at the library. Will definitely be reading one of his, but which one?