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Kansas Poems
Kansas Poems “is a poetry of place and microhistory, which nonetheless transcends the people and events it tells about . . . And while I’ve never been to Kansas, I now feel that I might have—or at least that there is a Kansas of my mind, a place of lakes and fireflies and small lives.” --Laura Chalar, author of Unlearning and Midnight at the Law Firm (Stories)Brian Daldorph’s eighth full-length collection of poetry is a tribute to his adopted state, where he has lived through the four seasons year by year, in Lawrence, Kansas.Kansas poetry blooms in these pages, not only poems set in Lawrence, Linwood, Garden City, and Coffeyville, but also in the more mythological locations of Stony Creek Cemetery, Brook Creek Park, Oak Hill Cemetery and Stull, which, legend has it, is one of the gates of Hell. These are poems about Kansas a Vietnam vet still angry at the government who betrayed him; undertaker Zeke Haskins, looking out of his office window at his dying small town. The football coach’s wife who fears that her husband will recruit their sons for the sport he loves.There are ghost stories here, jail visits, love stories and breakups, a Kansas story about Brown Recluse spiders and Black Widows “waiting in outhouses and dreams with that one bite/ to freeze your limbs and jam your lungs . . .”
89 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
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About the author
Brian Daldorph
17 books8 followersBrian Daldorph teaches at the University of Kansas and Douglas County Jail in Lawrence, Kansas. He edits Coal City Review.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 4, 2022
In KANSAS POEMS, Brian Daldorph evokes the moods, the places, and the seasons of his adopted home state. This strong collection was named a finalist for The Birdy Poetry Prize by Meadowlark Books, and reading it is like taking a guided tour through Kansas, both its present and its past. Daldorph often pinpoints a location with a title, such as “Pulpit Rock,” or “Cooper City,” and then paints a portrait of the place, and sometimes its inhabitants. In “Cooper City” we see one of the many small towns in Kansas that has seen better days: “Main Street’s a few hand-me-down stores.” Daldorph’s deft characterizations in poem after poem are sharp in detail but can also be read as types, such as this one in the last stanza of “Cooper City”:
Zeke Haskins, Undertaker,
with old Zeke in the window wondering
days on end if he or Cooper City
will go first.
The many characters that people his narratives remind me of the wonderful SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY by Edgar Lee Masters. Daldorf is even able to do this by writing about what we don’t know, as in “Kansas City Vietnam War Memorial, April 2000.” Here he asks poignant questions about the dead that help us imagine their lives: “What was Felix Pacheco’s agony, / Jack Renfro’s last word [?]” “What happened to / the five Moores?”
Daldorf also tackles his own life in this collection, writing of both love and loss. In one of my favorite poems in the book, “Drought,” he depicts in beautiful but brief description the beginning of rain on drought-stricken country and then surprises us by turning the poem into a metaphor for loss with the last two lines.
I also love the dark, moody “Around Midnight,” where the “Last man walking/ in the sleeping world” describes his longing:
I want it to be jazz
but it’s cicada.
I want it to be poetry
but there are scant words.
I want it to be love
but know I’ll sleep alone.
I am a fan of poetry that evokes longing and loss and several other excellent pieces in this vein are “Mason City, Kansas,” “Empties,” and the book’s closing poem, “Estate Sale” with its lovely, sad last lines:
Outside her house, by 13th Street,
the leftovers of her life:
brass floor lamp, split cushions,
old books and pictures,
we through from last night’s rain.
But KANSAS POEMS is not filled with doom and gloom. Daldorph writes of happier moments and moods in many of the poems, such as “First Date: Oak Hill Cemetery,” “Laurel Avenue,” and “the miracle.” He also gives us a lively series of historical pieces about the paleontologist Handel T. Martin, ending with another of my favorite poems, “Kansas Rhinoceros,” which is packed with vivid descriptions such as these: “you’d been tucked up since the Miocene” …. “Kansas Rhinoceros, broad as wide, / jaw big as a man’s shoulder.” …. “Wooden-hoop ribs stapled / round your empty hogshead belly.” …. and “I stare at your brick-toothed grin.”
Daldorph’s tour through Kansas via his poetry will delight those who live in Kansas, as well as those who’ve never visited the Sunflower state, but this collection is much more than a regional book. At his best, Daldorph writes about what it means to be human, no matter what state we call home.
Zeke Haskins, Undertaker,
with old Zeke in the window wondering
days on end if he or Cooper City
will go first.
The many characters that people his narratives remind me of the wonderful SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY by Edgar Lee Masters. Daldorf is even able to do this by writing about what we don’t know, as in “Kansas City Vietnam War Memorial, April 2000.” Here he asks poignant questions about the dead that help us imagine their lives: “What was Felix Pacheco’s agony, / Jack Renfro’s last word [?]” “What happened to / the five Moores?”
Daldorf also tackles his own life in this collection, writing of both love and loss. In one of my favorite poems in the book, “Drought,” he depicts in beautiful but brief description the beginning of rain on drought-stricken country and then surprises us by turning the poem into a metaphor for loss with the last two lines.
I also love the dark, moody “Around Midnight,” where the “Last man walking/ in the sleeping world” describes his longing:
I want it to be jazz
but it’s cicada.
I want it to be poetry
but there are scant words.
I want it to be love
but know I’ll sleep alone.
I am a fan of poetry that evokes longing and loss and several other excellent pieces in this vein are “Mason City, Kansas,” “Empties,” and the book’s closing poem, “Estate Sale” with its lovely, sad last lines:
Outside her house, by 13th Street,
the leftovers of her life:
brass floor lamp, split cushions,
old books and pictures,
we through from last night’s rain.
But KANSAS POEMS is not filled with doom and gloom. Daldorph writes of happier moments and moods in many of the poems, such as “First Date: Oak Hill Cemetery,” “Laurel Avenue,” and “the miracle.” He also gives us a lively series of historical pieces about the paleontologist Handel T. Martin, ending with another of my favorite poems, “Kansas Rhinoceros,” which is packed with vivid descriptions such as these: “you’d been tucked up since the Miocene” …. “Kansas Rhinoceros, broad as wide, / jaw big as a man’s shoulder.” …. “Wooden-hoop ribs stapled / round your empty hogshead belly.” …. and “I stare at your brick-toothed grin.”
Daldorph’s tour through Kansas via his poetry will delight those who live in Kansas, as well as those who’ve never visited the Sunflower state, but this collection is much more than a regional book. At his best, Daldorph writes about what it means to be human, no matter what state we call home.
March 8, 2021
It amazes me that a college professor from England can sound so convincingly Kansan and capture the essence of a state that is largely sky and empty spaces. But that is what a good poet does, slipping into other heads, other lives, other human conditions and turning them into art and empathy. Daldorph also teaches poetry classes in jail, so he’s witnessed lives very different from his own: how being locked up affects both the inmates and their families. His poems are spare, compressed, yet somehow express everything left unsaid.
Some of the poems remind me of Spoon River Anthology, except that Daldorph is mostly reading the thoughts of the living. We sense a complete soap opera could be hiding behind “Missing Husband,” who grabbed the keys to his truck and left in the middle of washing dishes:
“….Didn’t take his wallet.
Didn’t take anything but his truck and himself.”
It ends
“You must have heard something, a postcard from Las
Vegas or a phone call late one Tuesday evening, something,”
but there was nothing, she insisted, nothing (apart from
that one thing but she’d torn it up and burnt it).”
This collection is also full of variety, from poems about nature and impressive fossil finds to the slice of life poems, many of which are titled with a street address and tell us something about what is going on there. Sometimes it’s the precise moment we’re staring in the window, other times the poet captures a repeated activity:
“There was Mr. McGruder at 1204
who’d practice his cello
on the front porch on summer nights,
the same notes over and over, wobbly,
sharp as cat claws.”
(“13th Street”)
One of the most gripping poems is “The Visit,” in which parents drive across state to see their son, who hasn’t yet been sentenced, at the penitentiary. The dialogue is very convincingly understated, as the parents try to hold themselves together with comments like
“ ‘Good visit,’ we say, ‘fine visit, actually.’”
Some of the poems remind me of Spoon River Anthology, except that Daldorph is mostly reading the thoughts of the living. We sense a complete soap opera could be hiding behind “Missing Husband,” who grabbed the keys to his truck and left in the middle of washing dishes:
“….Didn’t take his wallet.
Didn’t take anything but his truck and himself.”
It ends
“You must have heard something, a postcard from Las
Vegas or a phone call late one Tuesday evening, something,”
but there was nothing, she insisted, nothing (apart from
that one thing but she’d torn it up and burnt it).”
This collection is also full of variety, from poems about nature and impressive fossil finds to the slice of life poems, many of which are titled with a street address and tell us something about what is going on there. Sometimes it’s the precise moment we’re staring in the window, other times the poet captures a repeated activity:
“There was Mr. McGruder at 1204
who’d practice his cello
on the front porch on summer nights,
the same notes over and over, wobbly,
sharp as cat claws.”
(“13th Street”)
One of the most gripping poems is “The Visit,” in which parents drive across state to see their son, who hasn’t yet been sentenced, at the penitentiary. The dialogue is very convincingly understated, as the parents try to hold themselves together with comments like
“ ‘Good visit,’ we say, ‘fine visit, actually.’”
March 7, 2021
Another perfectly focused collection of poems by one of Kansas' best kept secrets. Read this book!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews