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Thin Kimono
"I like being in the world of Craig's poems. Anything can happen, and probably will, and it will affect me in small or large ways that I couldn't have imagined. The precision of their imagery keeps me reeling with delight."—James Tate Thin Kimono continues Michael Earl Craig's singular breed of brilliant absurdist poetry, utterly and masterfully slanting the realities of daily existence. Michael Earl Craig is the author of two previous collections of Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006) and Can You Relax in My House (Fence Books, 2002). He lives in Livingston, Montana, where he is a certified journeyman farrier.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
First published August 31, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 20, 2011
Magical, specific, significant. I've read it five or six times. It makes me feel like I swam in a cold river in Montana, and now I'm warming up by the campfire drinking coffee with Flannery O'Conner, Haruki Murakami and Woodie Guthrie.
February 11, 2014
If I'd received these poems, just a cluster of them, in my submission pile, would I have felt the magic that is this collection as a whole?
Some snippets:
After lunch a human head came out, on its own,
from behind the boathouse.
This was supposedly an omen
but we took it as an inconvenience.
Turns out ants were carrying it,
same as a hoagie. (28)
--
There were over two dozen of them.
Their hands pendulated a little.
This trued them.
The colors of the pool
were deep blue and turquoise
with shafts of gold light in spots,
and the swimmers farthest from him
looked ghostly, like faded blueprints
of swimmers. (32)
--
The night was a dazzling opponent.
The sky spat lightly all over me. (51)
--
The withdrawn sound of the Wiffle bat as it moves through the air. (73)
A few poems:
"At Pretzel Hut": http://the-investigative-generalist.b...
ADVICE FOR THE POET
Never aim your bicycle at a chicken.
Never set your glasses on an anvil.
THE NEIGHBOR
The neighbor said, "But seriously, who is it you're writing these for? Surely you have an audience in mind." I thought about it carefully, I did, but ended up repeating almost word for word what I had already said, which was that the poems were written for me, or for readers who were exactly the same person I was. I said I couldn't imagine any other person. I said I could see how that probably sounded disingenuous, or solipsistic, or both. And just then a small dinner roll fell from the table, rolled across the living room steadily, not slowing at all, or wobbling. It rolled across the room and passed through the doorway into the bedroom and the door slammed shut behind it.
Some snippets:
After lunch a human head came out, on its own,
from behind the boathouse.
This was supposedly an omen
but we took it as an inconvenience.
Turns out ants were carrying it,
same as a hoagie. (28)
--
There were over two dozen of them.
Their hands pendulated a little.
This trued them.
The colors of the pool
were deep blue and turquoise
with shafts of gold light in spots,
and the swimmers farthest from him
looked ghostly, like faded blueprints
of swimmers. (32)
--
The night was a dazzling opponent.
The sky spat lightly all over me. (51)
--
The withdrawn sound of the Wiffle bat as it moves through the air. (73)
A few poems:
"At Pretzel Hut": http://the-investigative-generalist.b...
ADVICE FOR THE POET
Never aim your bicycle at a chicken.
Never set your glasses on an anvil.
THE NEIGHBOR
The neighbor said, "But seriously, who is it you're writing these for? Surely you have an audience in mind." I thought about it carefully, I did, but ended up repeating almost word for word what I had already said, which was that the poems were written for me, or for readers who were exactly the same person I was. I said I couldn't imagine any other person. I said I could see how that probably sounded disingenuous, or solipsistic, or both. And just then a small dinner roll fell from the table, rolled across the living room steadily, not slowing at all, or wobbling. It rolled across the room and passed through the doorway into the bedroom and the door slammed shut behind it.
February 15, 2011
At the modern end of the great tradition and long line of ‘farrier poets’ that began with Scotland’s Tiki Tonsylvester in the 14th century, Michael Craig is simply awesome. He is his own voice which houses sadness in the weirdest and oddest and funniest constructions. Simician, Collinsian, Tateian with a little Tahitian and Inuit thrown in. I will employ the often used simile that reading his poems is like when a horse kicks you but just misses; definitely scary, but worthy of a happy sigh of relief.
September 18, 2010
Michael Earl Craig continues to make me feel the kind of recklessness in words that I want to feel in life. Needless to say, I'm eating lunch like I mean it.
March 15, 2015
I will read this again and a few times, I am sure. When I read it over the past couple days I sometimes laughed until I cried. When I read some of it aloud last night to friend Jen I also choked with laughter, tears streaming down my cheeks. Did Jen also think the stuff that I read was hilarious and wonderful? Not really. I mean, she likes me and was delighted, I am sure, to see me laugh like that. Do I think most other readers of this would laugh like that? I doubt it. Laughter is so idiosyncratic. One person's offense (or bizarre) is another's delight, and this is something that would seem to me unique to comedy. That movie about the word's dirtiest joke told by some of the world's best comedians, The Aristocats, is funny, they all contend, because it crosses the line and the more line-crossing (the dirtier), the better.
But many of us who saw that movie agreed with the comedians that the joke was funny, and the more absurd, the better. When I was first dating my wife we saw a farce by Michael Frayn, Noises Off, and we laughed like that together, "til we cried," as they say, and I was relieved we had that in common. Having a similar sense of humor is a good sign, definitely. But a farce is ridiculous. Would everyone think it is funny? Surely not. More of us laugh at Twain and Sedaris than would laugh at Craig.
Thin Kimono (not about a thin kimono or anything like that) is not a series of dirty jokes, and it is not (I think) a farce, though it has farcical elements--it may just be in part making the art of poetry a farce). Thin Kimono is (maybe) absurdist poetry, which is to say it has absurd and/or surreal aspects to the way it makes meaning, but is also for me decidedly poetry, by which I mean language and meaning play is central to its enterprise. Yes, there are jokes in it, the world it depicts is sometimes crazy, but it's fresh and inventive and original language use. I loved reading Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano" and, for instance, the story in it of Bobby Watson, his wife Bobby Watson and their children Bobby Watson, Bobby Watson, Bobby Watson, etc. The play is absurd but raises issues about language and reality in funny ways. A Night of Serious Drinking by Rene Daumal is clever and rich and funny, but absurd. The surrealist Comte de Lautréamont insisted art should be as "new .... as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella" which is to say it should have surprising juxtapositions. Think, in different ways, of Dali or Duchamp. Make it new, Pound said.
But Thin Kimono is poetry. It reminds me at times of images you read in Neruda, strange and wonderful and crazy juxtapositions. Some of James Tate (who champions Craig in a book cover blurb), John Ashbery, Russell Edson. Charles Simic's work. Thin Kimono is often funny, but there is also a deeper, sadder element that runs through it. He has a poem about an owl that wakes him in the night that makes him weep, and not with laughter, but it's also not clear why. . . maybe in part just the shock of beauty. . . and that's what it is for me and these poems, too:
I'm awakened at 3 a.m. to the sound of an owl.
It takes me a minute to find my glasses.
I press my face to the window.
A silver flash crosses the yard.
It settles into an owl shape on a nearby post.
My nose and eyes are stinging.
A stinging behind my face.
Like some kind of problem behind a billboard.
Why would a man look at an owl and start to cry?
My body is trying to reject something.
I have no idea what that is.
The owl is sitting in the moonlight.
The yard is completely still.
One poem, called just "poem" may begin to get at what he is about; in it he says,
To those people who are always talking about "surrealism"
can I suggest opening your fucking eyes?
If you do this you will see mothballs. And a green nightgown.
One stanza, with maybe political (or fashion?) commentary:
It’s Wednesday, I’m
gonna get me a belt buckle with
a bald eagle on it.
A woman in a dream he has:
She silently mouthed the word pop
twice—pop, pop—and I felt myself twitch sharply
in my bed. I knew I could wake up if I wanted to,
but it just wasn’t my style.
ADVICE FOR THE POET
Never aim your bicycle at a chicken.
Never set your glasses on an anvil.
And some more commentary on poetry:
It's a poet's job / to be dragged by an ankle / through town.
THE NEIGHBOR
The neighbor said, "But seriously, who is it you're writing these for? Surely you have an audience in mind." I thought about it carefully, I did, but ended up repeating almost word for word what I had already said, which was that the poems were written for me, or for readers who were exactly the same person I was. I said I couldn't imagine any other person. I said I could see how that probably sounded disingenuous, or solipsistic, or both. And just then a small dinner roll fell from the table, rolled across the living room steadily, not slowing at all, or wobbling. It rolled across the room and passed through the doorway into the bedroom and the door slammed shut behind it.
From "I Believe": I believe in tacos and mortification
From “Bluebirds” …
I slump over in my chair.
It’s like I’m covered in bluebirds.
Little brilliant ones.
And when I say this,
“little brilliant ones,”
I lisp a little like a man
who’s been punched hard in the mouth
but still wants to talk bluebirds.
Windsor:
I wish to speak plainly about a one-eyed horse I know.
His name is Windsor.
I love his "Bear Photo" poem which talks about simile and anthromophism and what we imagine bears to be doing and thinking.
.
Craig is a farrier (he shoes horses) and he often writes about that work; as he says in an interview, "No, I don’t know of any other farriers who are poets, but there probably are some. The main similarity between these vocations—the common general theme—is that each camp thinks the other is ridiculous. My poetry friends think shoeing is quaint/unimaginable (think Society for Creative Anachronism: chainmail, jousting, fiber arts), and my shoeing friends think poetry is quaint/unimaginable (again: chainmail, jousting, fiber arts, etc.)."
On poetry and the meaning of one of his poems: "People were asking me what it 'meant.' It’s like asking what a Jackson Pollock means. I suggested we concentrate on the mood and tone of the poem rather than the 'content.' Even if a poem has no immediately obvious content/meaning, it will still impart its tone/mood."
So Craig's work is not about "about."
And he says, speaking of bicycles and typewriters, "It makes me think of a bicycle-related quote I came across recently (while trying to find something completely unrelated to bicycles on the Internet), attributed to Corvus Corvax: “My single-speed is sacred. Usefulness comes from what is not there.”
The logic of dreams.
But many of us who saw that movie agreed with the comedians that the joke was funny, and the more absurd, the better. When I was first dating my wife we saw a farce by Michael Frayn, Noises Off, and we laughed like that together, "til we cried," as they say, and I was relieved we had that in common. Having a similar sense of humor is a good sign, definitely. But a farce is ridiculous. Would everyone think it is funny? Surely not. More of us laugh at Twain and Sedaris than would laugh at Craig.
Thin Kimono (not about a thin kimono or anything like that) is not a series of dirty jokes, and it is not (I think) a farce, though it has farcical elements--it may just be in part making the art of poetry a farce). Thin Kimono is (maybe) absurdist poetry, which is to say it has absurd and/or surreal aspects to the way it makes meaning, but is also for me decidedly poetry, by which I mean language and meaning play is central to its enterprise. Yes, there are jokes in it, the world it depicts is sometimes crazy, but it's fresh and inventive and original language use. I loved reading Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano" and, for instance, the story in it of Bobby Watson, his wife Bobby Watson and their children Bobby Watson, Bobby Watson, Bobby Watson, etc. The play is absurd but raises issues about language and reality in funny ways. A Night of Serious Drinking by Rene Daumal is clever and rich and funny, but absurd. The surrealist Comte de Lautréamont insisted art should be as "new .... as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella" which is to say it should have surprising juxtapositions. Think, in different ways, of Dali or Duchamp. Make it new, Pound said.
But Thin Kimono is poetry. It reminds me at times of images you read in Neruda, strange and wonderful and crazy juxtapositions. Some of James Tate (who champions Craig in a book cover blurb), John Ashbery, Russell Edson. Charles Simic's work. Thin Kimono is often funny, but there is also a deeper, sadder element that runs through it. He has a poem about an owl that wakes him in the night that makes him weep, and not with laughter, but it's also not clear why. . . maybe in part just the shock of beauty. . . and that's what it is for me and these poems, too:
I'm awakened at 3 a.m. to the sound of an owl.
It takes me a minute to find my glasses.
I press my face to the window.
A silver flash crosses the yard.
It settles into an owl shape on a nearby post.
My nose and eyes are stinging.
A stinging behind my face.
Like some kind of problem behind a billboard.
Why would a man look at an owl and start to cry?
My body is trying to reject something.
I have no idea what that is.
The owl is sitting in the moonlight.
The yard is completely still.
One poem, called just "poem" may begin to get at what he is about; in it he says,
To those people who are always talking about "surrealism"
can I suggest opening your fucking eyes?
If you do this you will see mothballs. And a green nightgown.
One stanza, with maybe political (or fashion?) commentary:
It’s Wednesday, I’m
gonna get me a belt buckle with
a bald eagle on it.
A woman in a dream he has:
She silently mouthed the word pop
twice—pop, pop—and I felt myself twitch sharply
in my bed. I knew I could wake up if I wanted to,
but it just wasn’t my style.
ADVICE FOR THE POET
Never aim your bicycle at a chicken.
Never set your glasses on an anvil.
And some more commentary on poetry:
It's a poet's job / to be dragged by an ankle / through town.
THE NEIGHBOR
The neighbor said, "But seriously, who is it you're writing these for? Surely you have an audience in mind." I thought about it carefully, I did, but ended up repeating almost word for word what I had already said, which was that the poems were written for me, or for readers who were exactly the same person I was. I said I couldn't imagine any other person. I said I could see how that probably sounded disingenuous, or solipsistic, or both. And just then a small dinner roll fell from the table, rolled across the living room steadily, not slowing at all, or wobbling. It rolled across the room and passed through the doorway into the bedroom and the door slammed shut behind it.
From "I Believe": I believe in tacos and mortification
From “Bluebirds” …
I slump over in my chair.
It’s like I’m covered in bluebirds.
Little brilliant ones.
And when I say this,
“little brilliant ones,”
I lisp a little like a man
who’s been punched hard in the mouth
but still wants to talk bluebirds.
Windsor:
I wish to speak plainly about a one-eyed horse I know.
His name is Windsor.
I love his "Bear Photo" poem which talks about simile and anthromophism and what we imagine bears to be doing and thinking.
.
Craig is a farrier (he shoes horses) and he often writes about that work; as he says in an interview, "No, I don’t know of any other farriers who are poets, but there probably are some. The main similarity between these vocations—the common general theme—is that each camp thinks the other is ridiculous. My poetry friends think shoeing is quaint/unimaginable (think Society for Creative Anachronism: chainmail, jousting, fiber arts), and my shoeing friends think poetry is quaint/unimaginable (again: chainmail, jousting, fiber arts, etc.)."
On poetry and the meaning of one of his poems: "People were asking me what it 'meant.' It’s like asking what a Jackson Pollock means. I suggested we concentrate on the mood and tone of the poem rather than the 'content.' Even if a poem has no immediately obvious content/meaning, it will still impart its tone/mood."
So Craig's work is not about "about."
And he says, speaking of bicycles and typewriters, "It makes me think of a bicycle-related quote I came across recently (while trying to find something completely unrelated to bicycles on the Internet), attributed to Corvus Corvax: “My single-speed is sacred. Usefulness comes from what is not there.”
The logic of dreams.
August 29, 2010
A really fun collection of poems by Craig. The word "wry" comes to mind. Plus, this book includes the best poem about weed whacking ever.
February 11, 2011
Wholly smokes.
March 27, 2011
The reader can almost be dumb, as the poet writes, and still get something out of this book. It's extraordinary.
April 15, 2012
"We dream of perfecting life / somewhere else. In space, let's say. / Wearing Erik Satie stretch pants."
September 29, 2019
I generally like the voice: funny, unpretentious, super dry, sensitive to beauty. Too many poems felt too similar, though. I don't remember feeling that way with Yes, Master. It could be I'm getting inured to the style: it often reads like journal entries ("Notes to Self" is one of the longer, more blah poems). Sometimes, the musings are charming. Sometimes, they are bland. At worst, they can be obtuse:
(from "Poem")
There's a way to talk about this in poetry, with humor even. Doing it as a glib aside rubs me the wrong way. In a 105-page manuscript, I could do without passages like this. I like this poet and would recommend him, but I'd start with a different book.
Things have changed with me.
I no longer think it's fair
that retarded people can take the word
and have it all to themselves.
(from "Poem")
There's a way to talk about this in poetry, with humor even. Doing it as a glib aside rubs me the wrong way. In a 105-page manuscript, I could do without passages like this. I like this poet and would recommend him, but I'd start with a different book.
August 4, 2018
Brilliant beautiful quirky and running to the everyday absurd.
March 6, 2011
This slim volume of poetry is entertaining. The poet lives in Montana where he shoes horses for a living. This is his third published book of poetry. The titles of the poems lure the reader back to ones such as "The suicidal peahen stopped" or "After a terrifying nap". Many readers should enjoy this collection.
September 10, 2014
This book is easily one of my five favorite books of poetry ever read. It might be my favorite! It's hilarious and contemplative. It moves gorgeously through the surreal and mundane. Michael Earl Craig is a tremendous thinker and writer!
December 29, 2014
A good rec. from Rachel Glaser. I'm not sure I'd call Craig a genius like she did--her own work is better--but there's a lot of fun and variety here. You never know what you're going to get when you turn the page: prose poem, aphorism, cut-up, anecdote.
November 10, 2010
from Thin Kimono by Michael Earl Craig:
Advice for the Poet
Never aim your bicycle at a chicken.
Never set your glasses on an anvil.
Advice for the Poet
Never aim your bicycle at a chicken.
Never set your glasses on an anvil.
May 27, 2011
Not a huge fan of this book, but he has a couple others that are magnificent.
July 10, 2011
<3 montana poets.
February 13, 2016
So good. Read this on winter break and it broke me (like a horse) and bridled me (also like a horse).
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews