The Way Life Should Be

by Ken Norris

"He is in short, a poet, and a good one. The world he inhabits is a geographically, politically and emotionally extensive one in which he is entirely comfortable in his own skin, and therefore able to register the surrounding phenomena exactly." - Michael Fournier, Hiram Poetry Review

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 20, 2003

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am the age they were
when I first admired them, and they lured me
into this life of loneliness and sky.
I look at their old tired faces now
and see the traces of despondency and madness,
look in the mirror
and see the developing traces of my own.
It might almost be a noble life.

- The poets, pg. 13

* * *

I spent years
looking for your eyes.
So strange to declare that,
like confessing to a lifetime
of secret cannibalism.

Everywhere I went
I was looking for eyes
that would look back at me
just like that.

- Love poem, pg. 40

* * *

I live
in the quietness
of a deep solitude.

It is lonelier
here than I
ever imagined,

ever feared.
The commonplace
terror is often

the one that gets you.

- The commonplace, pg. 52

* * *

I read Creeley
and he ruins
my poetry.

This has been
going on
for 30 years now.

- Recurrence, pg. 69

* * *

We know it's not nothingness
that surrounds us, that a somethingness
obtains. When we suffer loss
we know the lost has gone back
into the boundless.
And that everyone lost
waits for us there.

- Metaphysics, pg. 82