Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey

by Hayden Carruth

There can be no doubt that Hayden Carruth is one of the preeminent American poets of the late twentieth century. In these poems written since publication of his Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, he speaks with intimate and urgent clarity of love late in life, and in heartrending poems addresses his daughter's struggle against cancer. In others he engages the loves, friendships, and social concerns of a lifetime. With passion and pathos and great good humor, in poems that could only be written by a mature poet at the height of his powers, Carruth achieves a nobility of vision that is rare in any age.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, 20th Century

140 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1996

About the author

Hayden Carruth was an American poet, literary critic, and anthologist known for his distinctive voice, blending formal precision with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. Over a career spanning more than sixty years, he published over thirty books of poetry, as well as essays, literary criticism, and anthologies. His work often explored themes of rural life, hardship, mental illness, and social justice, reflecting both his personal struggles and his political convictions.
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Carruth studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later earned an M.A. from the University of Chicago. His early career included serving as editor-in-chief of Poetry and as an advisory editor of The Hudson Review for two decades. He later became poetry editor at Harper’s Magazine and held teaching positions at Johnson State College, the University of Vermont, and Syracuse University, where he influenced a new generation of poets.
Carruth received numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Collected Shorter Poems (1992) and the National Book Award for Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey (1996). His later works, such as Doctor Jazz and Last Poems, further cemented his reputation as a major voice in American poetry. His influential anthology The Voice That Is Great Within Us remains a landmark collection of American verse.

Reviews

[Ken]

Carruth's poems are quite conversational -- in some cases, too much so -- but he's not afraid of humor and is also willing to wade into issues of war and outrage. In that sense, along with references to drinking and smoking, he is a man of his time (1921-2008). This book came out in '96, but Carruth shows great 60s creed.

Here's the first "fax" of many in a collection called "Faxes to William":

Some poets write blurbs, William,
and some do not. And it is by
a law of nature that the former
envy the latter desperately
though they, the former, can do
nothing to release themselves
from the trap, squirm and prevaricate
as they may. They have unmade
their beds and they must shlep in them.

Insider's humor, that, for the small poetry world to chuckle over, poets seeking blurbs for their upcoming books being like approaching Typhoid Mary's and all....

At his best when he writes nature poems, Carruth is still worth a look, though I wonder that time will treat him kindly fifty years from now. Fifty years, after all, is one hell of a bully with little patience for most any writer.

[Masked · Rating 5 out of 5]

look, get any hayden carruth you can get your hands on. his poems are better than anything you're reading. this particular book is a late one. he's old. missing more than he'd planned. it's wistful sometimes. still, the man can talk about a chainsaw or a horn and make you feel different inside than you did before you looked at his words. damn.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Straight, strong language full of deep meaning.

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a few pages to settle into this one today, and I almost gave up. I'm glad I didn't. Carruth is an interesting man. The inside jacket of this book said that Carruth was a technical virtuoso; the first few pages made me think that it is very possible to be technically proficient and substantively deficient at the same time. But I came across a few gems that spoke to me, and they pulled me in. When Carruth writes "William, for the things life didn't give us we have no compensation. None." I was hooked. Here's a bearded, despondent old man railing against the many disappointments and failures of his life, probably over a meal of the titular scrambled eggs and whiskey.

When Carruth told William that the main reason he loved sending him faxes was because he didn't own a fax machine, I laughed out loud in an empty library. He had me. This guy, he got me. And so by the end of Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey I found myself thinking, "please sir, can I have some more?"

And oh yes, there is more.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Forty-Five”

When I was forty-five I lay for hours
beside a pool, the green hazy
springtime water, and watched
the salamanders coupling, how they drifted lazily,
their little hands floating before them,
aimlessly in and out of the shadows, fifteen
or twenty of them, and suddenly two
would dart together and clasp
one another belly to belly
the way we do, tender and vigorous, and then
would let go and drift away
at peace, lazily,
in the green pool that was their world
and for a while was mine.

Hayden Carruth wrestles with war and late-in-life love and drinking and woodland creatures in this charming, accessible and clean collection of his later poems.

Favorites

“Wife Poem”
“Birthday Cake”
“Quality of Wine”
“Resorts”
“Endnote”
“Forty-Five”
“Alteration”

[Alarie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review is more about personal taste than a criticism of Carruth's writing. He wrote accessible, narrative poetry, normally my favorite type. I just didn’t engage with many of these poems. That may be because I was juggling a long volume of poems by Raymond Carver at the same time that I found much more appealing.

Many of Carruth's poems are touchingly sentimental about his late life marriage to a beautiful, younger woman, like this one

Cardinal

Strands of her red hair
sweat-stuck to her forehead
and a cardinal shrieks

in the dooryard. She is a poet
cooking supper on the hottest
afternoon of summer, toiling

in the book-lined kitchen.
What can an old man do
in return but make little

poems that will disappear
like the cardinal’s shriek
when the night breeze rises?

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hayden Carruth's poems are some of the most unique I've read. He is a masterful storyteller and the depth of his poems reached me in such a way that I haven't experienced before. He's not like the quintessential American poet, with language riddled with roundabouts, but he is the quintessential American who happens to be a poet. I'm not going to lie and say that every poem is a hit, but there are multiple poems that are really tremendous.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book of poetry by an aging poet in full mastery of his craft. The poems center on the themes of aging, finding love later in life, appreciating nature and moments, and his heartbreak as his daughter suffers incurable cancer. Highly recommended.

[Blair · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection was highly recommended by G. Saunders in a podcast. It won a National Book award for Poetry and Carruth is a highly regarded poet. I wanted to get on his wave length and appreciate these poems but not this time or this collection.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

To hear this great poet, who died recently, read his work is like listening to the average American speak in poetic sentences about everyday life. Its jazz, pure jazz

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-1/2 stars
He writes poems of gardens and waters, of politics and places, of the mundane and the critical, and of love. But sometimes it seemed more that he was disgruntled and dissatisfied. I liked "Flying into St. Louis," "Isabel's Garden, May 14," "FAXES TO WILLIAM, #13" (which I have included below - a poem which I completely understand), and the poignant poem to his wife entitled "Auburn Poem." I am sure you will find some poems you like.
THIRTEEN
The fallen hibiscus flower
that was so erotic, intricate, and splendid
lay on the floor, a reddish
pulpy mess. I took it
to the container of unpleasantness
for the compost heap. Inevitably,
William, I thought of
all the poems I've written.

[Justin KM · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got turned onto Carruth from several great poems pick by Garrison Keillor for his wonderful "Good Poems" anthologies - the Scrambled Eggs, Forty-Five, and Little Citizen, among them.

Unfortunately, it turned out those really were 'greatest hits'. This collection doesn't quite consistently deliver the quality of those aforementioned works. They seemed a bit lazily written. Perhaps given Carruth was near end of life when he wrote them (?), and had already won all the accolades he thought he ever would?

Still, there were some nuggets in there I'm glad I encountered, like In Georgetown and the Last Poem in the World. Hayden's at his best when he's being bold or funny, instead of morose and cynical. It's too bad he doesn't indulge those moods very often.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vividly rendered poems, so visual by Hayden Carruth, who just passed away a few years ago. This book won the 1996 National Book Award for poetry. The poems here (written 1991-1995) are vivid, and very visual, and laced with a sly sense of humor. He covers many topics from nature to sex, and to injustice, to grwowing old. The poems have a definite narrative edge. Some of the poems are extremely short, but there are a few multi-section poems that run several pages. Carruth lived most of his life in upstate NY and Vermont; he passed away in 2008. (4.5-5 stars)

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

At last I have found a poet who writes like I do! Carruth writes in an accessible voice that most of American poets seem to disdain. (Think John Ashbery here) Clear and direct generally, and yet his words may still take you places or surprise. Although, I have read much poetry, this is my first Carruth. I expect to order more. Do yourself a favor and see if this grizzled old man turns on a few light bulbs in your head.

A hard toss between 4 and 5 stars.

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

Old, decrepit guy writes poems about having a young and sexy girlfriend in his dotage. Fellow poets who judged these things back in the '90s award him plaudits because presumably that's what they hope will happen at the end of their lives too? Old guy objectifies the girlfriend, continues to drink a lot. Observes her doing shit while he sits around and drinks.

The contrast with Donald Hall is stark with regard to perspective and wisdom gained in the face of aging.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This lovely collection mixes some profound poems or quotes with some mundane poems. I say mundane, it is really the topics that are mundane while the poems themselves remain quite enjoyable. Somewhat like the nuances of life. There are several poems that had strong impacts on me. I appreciate the author touching on aging too.

[Matt Trowbridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read across the course of several months' worth of lunch breaks. The poems in this collection occur in different seasons, so it sort of suited how I ended up reading them. Lots of beautiful meditations on death (and life, because it is impossible to think or write about one and not the other) and funny slice-of-life works focused on Carruth and his partner's remote life in Vermont.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn fine verse. Damn good book of poetry. Decidedly older white dude writing. Old white dude's expertise in adherence to meter and syllabic count admirable. His tight free verse amazing. Cannot deny this one its fair due, which is top notch American poetry.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title made me excited for a little more grit--I was thinking of August Kleinzahler's Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow. These poems are sometimes lovely, sometimes gritty, but all too often bland and oversure of themselves.

[Brian Wasserman · Rating 2 out of 5]

allusion porn, mr carruth confesses his love of the canonical greats, poetry is too prosaic

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like scrambled eggs and whiskey, a Carruth poem is a hearty treatment for a hangover. These poems are gritty and witty, yet deeply sobering.

[Phil Overeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection. Thank you, Rex—I will chronologically backwards to his previous collection!

[Abe Something · Rating 4 out of 5]

How’s I miss this guy?

[Teraberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a long time to finish this book. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it fell behind my night stand. I’m glad I found it. I needed some good poems.

[K.V.D. K.V.D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made my eyes cry

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely, strange, and sad. How I like it

[Rylan Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes

[Drubeus Swagrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazingly relatable in it's sentimentality. Maybe it's just because of where my life is right now. After reading the first few poems in this collection, I thought it might be possible that Hayden Carruth wrote my life. After finishing, I feel that he probably at least co-authored it.

[Michael Palkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carruth consistently makes references to Homeric epics and other miscellaneous ancient literature, often in an idealized and romanticized way with allusions such as his brief and dreamy four liner, "Rubaiyat" where he sits on a pier with Omar Khayyám and Tu Fu, writing verses and cheering as they drop each verse down the river, or the wistful and impending fatalism of "Folk Song: On the Road Again", where he seems to channel Odysseus to take over from his own form, his own frailty and disintegration with the world, which is perfectly instantiated in the poems "February Morning", "Swept" and "April Clean-up". He channels the Tempest in "Solemnization" taking the role of Caliban, which has numerous textual significances that I won't disseminate here. Apollo is referenced and his writing in "Hyacinth Garden in Brooklyn" begins to suture the ancients with the present.

His intersectional affinity as someone intellectually full of vigor and creativity is contrasted with his impending death. Not only is he facing the decline of himself but his family, which is expressed beautifully in "Auburn Poem", where he discusses his daughter's battle with cancer, which could be contrasted with "Forty-Five" where he sketches out out a brief narrative which essentially illuminates the ephemeral nature of life and actions within such a life. The salamanders couple and dart together belly to belly lazily, eventually detaching and later dieing insignificantly. The book is not mere melancholy however as Carruth is funny, witty, energetic and bold about his life throughout, he is prepared to try new things and experience the world around him instead of accepting his bodily stupor, as in "Saturday at the Border" where he experiments with villanelle meter or "Ecstasy" and "Wife Poem" which shows a man comfortable and very very happy.

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts powerfully and somewhat dark. Stark imagery. Theme of loss physical and mental pervades.

Easy for me to follow. Clear structure and few obscure lines or over haughty allusions.

3.5 / 5.0