Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow

by August Kleinzahler

A collection of poems explores urban landscapes, modern life, and relationships

Genres: Poetry

93 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1995

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

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was in and out with this book -- like, from poem to poem and within poems themselves. I think what he's doing, the pairing of very exacting craft with gritty "urban" material, is great, but it comes off really mannered and false about half the time. But jeez, there are some beautiful moments. Read the first "Reno" poem, "San Francisco/New York," "Who Stole the Horses from the Indians?" "Visits," "Going."

Oh, and I totally agree with a previous reviewer about the troublesome font usage. Everything does look like it's in boldface. It's distracting.

[ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't always hear his music, or understand it. Most of the poems here baffle me, or large parts of them do. The references are often incomprehensible, sometimes even with a search engine on hand. But about ten of them are excellent. And a few I genuinely dislike. But I think Klienzahler gets it. I'm pretty sure.

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The maximum allowable eccentricity." This could have been, I think, what Kleinzahler represented to the institutional media/readers of this book, when it was published in the mid-nineties. (This is also a precept that can be said to define the boundary of what is publishable, and what is cast off. Some sort of graphed curve, with areas above and below, and axes of readership and readability.) Also, of quotas: there has to be at least one poet at all times that writes of the "ironically beautiful" (!) blight of New Jersey, but still squeezes in Paris and Ravel. There has to be at least one slightly portly and friendly guy who by most means shouldn't have been a poet, but is, and isn't threatening to you with writerly cliches of pomp, on one hand, or freakdom, on the other. Some chime-rhymes with just...enough...of...an...edge. To read that some of this was anthologized in a book called "Postmodernism" is curious. (Although: anyone watched a nineties film lately?)


Among the poems of landscapes and weather, which were guaranteed to be in book, no matter what, there are the ones that I copied down and fashioned into my own pirated e-book. I will continue to admire them as a pirate can. The title poem, with its "slow release of sibilants, o's and l's"..."The Porcelain Ink-Boat," with its allusion overload, inappropriate erudition, and impossible zen...the formally daring poems like "Crunching Numbers," which dangle out thinly connected words and phrases that somehow ring into sense.

[Christina M Rau · Rating 3 out of 5]

August Kleinzahler has an awesome name. Anyone with a name like that needs to do something special in life, needs to be in the arts. Luckily, he's got some poetic spunk. He's the author of Red Sauce, Whiskey, and Snow, a collection of poems that PGrin gave me for my birthday. I read it in an hour. It's, well, it's out there.

I read through the poems with a pen at the ready. I now have to go back through and add in the meanings for all the words I circled. Either he's got a vast vocabulary or a really good thesaurus.

He writes about specific flowers and specific birds and certain bums and certain spots on certain bridges in well-known and not-so-well-known cities. Either he's well traveled and well educated or he knows how to fake it.

The best of the bunch: "San Francisco/New York," "Reno," "Reno: Hard-Boiled," "Heebie-Jeebies," and "Land's End."

The rest are intriguing, full of imagery, and sometimes cryptic. I can't bring myself to say anything harsh about any of the poems because Allen Ginsberg praised him on the back of the book. I'm easily swayed.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jazzy and worldly. I feel like I've been around the world on the notes of a saxophone.

Very nice sound qualities (but not overwhelming) and some pretty good lines. Also not sentimental yet successfully sympathetic. Willing to experiment and take risks with lines and images.

One thing I need to criticize is the font choice. Not that this is something that can be changed (as this was published over ten years ago), but the font choice makes the italicized lines difficult to read as italicized; I often had to go back and reread them to see how they sounded the second time. Also, the font itself looks like the entire book's been written in bold, which is a strain on the eyes.

Font not withstanding, this is a unique read for those who want to be taken away while staying firmly at home.

[C · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me preface this review by admitting that I have never read anything else by this poet. I'm not sure if that matters as far as my thoughts on this collection, but I figured I should throw it out there.

If I had to give a one word review? Jumbled. This collection reads like an anthology. There are different styles, different voices. While this may show great talent, it made the book feel particularly disjointed to me. I appreciate the melding of high and low culture that is attempted in the language of this verse, but I don't feel compelled by it - it simply feels more like a writing exercise to me than actual writing.

There were a few high points for me - I really liked the title poem and the first poem in the volume knocked my socks off and had me expecting something great to follow. Unfortunately, the rest just felt empty to me.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the title doesn't get you, you probably won't like the poems. This is another great collection from a poet I admire for his breadth and humor. Not to mention honesty, and not in the overdone, pretentious, post-confessional American moment most contemporary poetry seems mired in. Check out, as well, Green Sees Things in Waves, as well as the prose book Cutty, One Rock.

[Malcolm Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

This acclaimed book just didn't do it for me. I'll read it again in a few years and see if my opinion has changed.

[Kristina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still open this and marvel.