Before Dawn on Bluff Road / Hollyhocks in the Fog: Selected New Jersey Poems / Selected San Francisco Poems

by August Kleinzahler

A collection of August Kleinzahler’s best poems, divided―like his life―between New Jersey and San Francisco

When August Kleinzahler won the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize for his collection The Strange Hours Travelers Keep , the judges’ citation referred to his work as “ferociously on the move, between locations, between forms, between registers.” They might also have added “between New Jersey and San Francisco,” the places Kleinzahler has spent his life traveling between, both on the road and on the page.

This collection assembles the best of his New Jersey and San Francisco poems for the first time, organized according to place, with each city receiving its own title and cover.

Providing readers with a gorgeous guide to Kleinzahler’s interior geography, Before Dawn on Bluff Road (New Jersey) and Hollyhocks in the Fog (San Francisco) function as both word-maps and word-anatomies of one of our greatest poet’s lifelong passions and preoccupations.

Genres: Poetry

176 pages, Hardcover

Published May 9, 2017

About the author

August Kleinzahler was born in Jersey City in 1949. He is the author of eleven books of poems and a memoir, "Cutty, One Rock." His collection "The Strange Hours Travelers Keep" was awarded the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize, and "Sleeping It Off in Rapid City" won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. That same year he received a Lannan Literary Award. His new collection, "The Hotel Oneira," will be published by FSG October 1st, 2013. He lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is two powerful books of poetry attached back to back. The New Jersey poems are tucked under a phantom grey cover like a winter sky while the San Francisco poetry nestles under a bruised pink cover like sunrise on a foggy morning.

Kleinzahler (like William Carlos Williams) can find, if not the beauty, the emotional resonance of shards and debris. He delivers paradoxes, collages of memories, and sharp images embedded in visions, scents, and sounds. (In fact, it would be fun to embed a sound chip in each cover. New Jersey: push a button to emit a crow's cry swallowed by a train's horn. The San Francisco button features "foghorns...like...beasts shackled to cliffs.")

Kleinzahler's work evokes, not the laughter of Billy Collins, but perhaps more subtle, wistful smiles. This is accessible but penetrating poetry.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fort Lee, the city, the bridge, Edgewater's factories and piers, the Hudson, the Palisades, Anderson Avenue, sunsets, rain.


I have loved the air above ShopRite Liquors
on summer evenings
better than the Marin hills at dusk
lavender and gold
stretching miles to the sea.

from "Poetics"

[Paul Wilner · Rating 5 out of 5]

He good. Very good.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like his style of writing and poetry is so descriptive and reflective. I am interested in reading more of his works.