By Common Salt

by Killarney Clary

Killarney Clary's second volume of spare and lucid prose poems sets certainty against wandering. Attempting to find a still point from which she might engage the violence and mystery of the contemporary landscape, this poet is brought to face the dangers that come disguised as comfort or steadiness. These poems challenge readers to put aside assumptions, traditions, and overfamiliar rhetorical strategies in order to encounter an art that questions what we keep.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Harrison Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The narrative disrupted by the lyric, not the other way round, is something that happens in these incredible poems. You get the feeling they’re written in prose only because the line would be distracting rather than supportive. The pure sentence is what’s in command here.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a man who, through disease, feels each minute is his first. He says to his wife, "You are the first person I've seen. This is my first cup of coffee." I saw him on television; he was frustrated by his diary that recorded repeatedly, "I have just now woken up."