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The Strange Hours Travellers Keep
Ranging from Vegas and Mayfair to the Asian steppes and contemporary Berlin, these poems touch down at will in tableaux where Liberace unceremoniously meets with St Kevin and Attila with Zsa Zsa Gabor.
- GenresPoetry
76 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 6, 2009
I'm beginning to suspect that Kleinzahler's work is just never really going to resonate with me, and he garners so much praise I wish I could put my finger on why.
I suppose I can agree that it's 'erudite' because he employs a larger vocabulary than most poetry I read, but that's where most of my agreement with others seems to end. I've never found his descriptions even remotely evocative or innovative. His insights aren't, well, that insightful?
Craftsmanship isn't really a question -- these poems, per his usual, are well-crafted but just feel lifeless. Every poem feels like a pulled punch, like someone who really loves boxing but sticks to the bag instead of the ring.
I suppose I can agree that it's 'erudite' because he employs a larger vocabulary than most poetry I read, but that's where most of my agreement with others seems to end. I've never found his descriptions even remotely evocative or innovative. His insights aren't, well, that insightful?
Craftsmanship isn't really a question -- these poems, per his usual, are well-crafted but just feel lifeless. Every poem feels like a pulled punch, like someone who really loves boxing but sticks to the bag instead of the ring.
June 22, 2010
These never grabbed me. I think the state of mind for these poems was too far removed from my own (it was a little more of a free-thinker, backpack through Europe approach to life).
My favorite was 'A History Of Western Music: Chapter 13' with its hesitant description of a jazz dancer in Paris
My favorite was 'A History Of Western Music: Chapter 13' with its hesitant description of a jazz dancer in Paris
The large black man, the large
Black man is dancing
And the Parisians are watching
Nervously, But the drummer, Pierre
That is, and Claude on bass
Are beginning to get it
They are watching the black man’s dance
And think they’ve found it
Relax, mes chers
We are nearing the end of the tune
April 15, 2015
Blame me. Kleinzahler is a much praised poet, as the back cover attests, but while I admire some of the ideas behind these poems, only one or two impressed me. Perhaps I have a blind spot when it comes to his work or perhaps the clever turns of phrase and profound meanings I favor are not in his style set. I have rarely been this unmoved by a poet of such reputation.
January 13, 2017
Kleinzahler is great if not necessarily Great. (The latter I don't much care about anyway.) His diction is good and he does not mostly compose autobiographical vignettes in MFA epiphanical style which is a great relief to us all.
October 9, 2017
Very humorous take-off on the Latin poets. I found myself liking these poems although it made me feel a bit jaded. Would like to read this again.
January 30, 2021
Decent. I understood about half of them. About four really struck me. Going to get another one.
July 6, 2021
It was fine. Actually good, just not what I usually consume. I’d give it 3.5/5 if I could
February 7, 2010
All reviews are a reckoning of expectations. In this case, my expectations were perhaps too high for The Strange Hours Travelers Keep by San Francisco poet August Kleinzhaler.
One, there’s Kleinzhaler, who was awarded the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for Sleeping it Off in Rapid City—a must-read book for me after reading the reviews.
Then there’s his tantalizing title for the collection, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, that promises a skewed, evanescent, shady vision of our lives in motion and a probing of what travel means.
And finally, and most importantly, there’s the gripping first poem that’s eponymous with the title of the collection.
The markets never rest
Always they are somewhere in agitation
Pork bellies, titanium, winter wheat
Electromagnetic ether peppered with photons
Treasure spewing from Unisys A-15 J mainframes
Across the firmament
Soundlessly among the thunderheads and passenger jets
As they make their nightlong journeys
Across the oceans and steppes
I might venture to say that this short stanza defines the movements and machinations of the world as accurately and evocatively as any 50 words could.
Kleinzhaler combines the words of commerce, capitalism, technology, and nature in such a criss-cross of restless movement that it makes me feel life as a strange force—both mechanistic and natural—beyond our understanding (and this was before the economic crisis of the last year—he easily could have sprinkled in “mortgage derivatives,” etc. to signal another wild weave of the pattern).
The poem goes on to relate the life of our strivings, our production, to nature itself in its metaphors— “Nebulae, incandescent frog spawn of information,” and “Like an enormous cloud of starlings”—while still evincing the essential loneliness one can experience in such a world through a simple image: “The lights of the airport pulse in the morning darkness.”
I wanted every poem in the collection to riff on these themes, to rise in a crescendo—or perhaps a swarm—of similar startling and telling images. Alas, I don’t think any of the rest of the poems in the collection are nearly as good, which isn’t to say that they aren’t good.
“The Old Poet, Dying,” touches on a different kind of travel—the fadings in and out of one leaning toward the grave. Fragments. Memories. Bodily functions. Strange TV shows. Stories and nurses.
Kleinzhaler is best when he’s focused as a witness, in fact, either to another’s story or as an observer of the world; his poems become less compelling the more personal they are.
In “Citronella and Yellow Wasps,” he’s fortunately on the road again, much as he is in “The Strange Hours Travelers Keep,” and he patches together images of I-35, Austin into a fragmented blur of the crazy yet sometimes disturbing beauty of the American road, whether it’s methamphetamine, NASCAR, or Jesus.
Before the heat and after
The little pink beeper ship and the flamingo
In the logo
Same color as the icing on the cookies inside
And the votive candles that heal bad sprains
Also, the billboards overhead
Through the dusty branches
Big square decals mounted against sky
A bit of nose here, some lettering
Jesus or barbecue
Exit 205
Cobalt blue background cut out of sky
Kleinzhaler writes without judgment; his poems are at once critique and appreciation. America’s kooky, yet sometimes menacing road images become totems of a traveler’s appreciation in “An Englishman Abroad.” Our talk radio hosts go with “coral pink” sunsets in a way that no other country can match.
In such travels, a placelessness can ensue. As he says in “On Waking in a Room and Not Knowing Where One Is,”
Cities each have a kind of light,
a color even,
or set of undertones
determined by the river or hills
as well as by the stone
of their countless buildings.
I cannot yet recall what city this is I’m in.
It must be close to dawn.
The book closes with a bang—or more than a bang actually. The definition of travel shifts to those marauding bands of yesteryear, “attached to their ponies like centaurs,” and the strange hours they keep are spent in a similar pattern as the opening poem, except they’re pillaging places, destroying buildings they never aspire to live in. It’s a vicious poem, full of “Ripping the ears off of hussars and pissing in the wounds.”
We’re born with an urge to pillage, to travel. Creative destruction. Destructive creation.
Perhaps I liked the book more than I thought I did.
One, there’s Kleinzhaler, who was awarded the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for Sleeping it Off in Rapid City—a must-read book for me after reading the reviews.
Then there’s his tantalizing title for the collection, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, that promises a skewed, evanescent, shady vision of our lives in motion and a probing of what travel means.
And finally, and most importantly, there’s the gripping first poem that’s eponymous with the title of the collection.
The markets never rest
Always they are somewhere in agitation
Pork bellies, titanium, winter wheat
Electromagnetic ether peppered with photons
Treasure spewing from Unisys A-15 J mainframes
Across the firmament
Soundlessly among the thunderheads and passenger jets
As they make their nightlong journeys
Across the oceans and steppes
I might venture to say that this short stanza defines the movements and machinations of the world as accurately and evocatively as any 50 words could.
Kleinzhaler combines the words of commerce, capitalism, technology, and nature in such a criss-cross of restless movement that it makes me feel life as a strange force—both mechanistic and natural—beyond our understanding (and this was before the economic crisis of the last year—he easily could have sprinkled in “mortgage derivatives,” etc. to signal another wild weave of the pattern).
The poem goes on to relate the life of our strivings, our production, to nature itself in its metaphors— “Nebulae, incandescent frog spawn of information,” and “Like an enormous cloud of starlings”—while still evincing the essential loneliness one can experience in such a world through a simple image: “The lights of the airport pulse in the morning darkness.”
I wanted every poem in the collection to riff on these themes, to rise in a crescendo—or perhaps a swarm—of similar startling and telling images. Alas, I don’t think any of the rest of the poems in the collection are nearly as good, which isn’t to say that they aren’t good.
“The Old Poet, Dying,” touches on a different kind of travel—the fadings in and out of one leaning toward the grave. Fragments. Memories. Bodily functions. Strange TV shows. Stories and nurses.
Kleinzhaler is best when he’s focused as a witness, in fact, either to another’s story or as an observer of the world; his poems become less compelling the more personal they are.
In “Citronella and Yellow Wasps,” he’s fortunately on the road again, much as he is in “The Strange Hours Travelers Keep,” and he patches together images of I-35, Austin into a fragmented blur of the crazy yet sometimes disturbing beauty of the American road, whether it’s methamphetamine, NASCAR, or Jesus.
Before the heat and after
The little pink beeper ship and the flamingo
In the logo
Same color as the icing on the cookies inside
And the votive candles that heal bad sprains
Also, the billboards overhead
Through the dusty branches
Big square decals mounted against sky
A bit of nose here, some lettering
Jesus or barbecue
Exit 205
Cobalt blue background cut out of sky
Kleinzhaler writes without judgment; his poems are at once critique and appreciation. America’s kooky, yet sometimes menacing road images become totems of a traveler’s appreciation in “An Englishman Abroad.” Our talk radio hosts go with “coral pink” sunsets in a way that no other country can match.
In such travels, a placelessness can ensue. As he says in “On Waking in a Room and Not Knowing Where One Is,”
Cities each have a kind of light,
a color even,
or set of undertones
determined by the river or hills
as well as by the stone
of their countless buildings.
I cannot yet recall what city this is I’m in.
It must be close to dawn.
The book closes with a bang—or more than a bang actually. The definition of travel shifts to those marauding bands of yesteryear, “attached to their ponies like centaurs,” and the strange hours they keep are spent in a similar pattern as the opening poem, except they’re pillaging places, destroying buildings they never aspire to live in. It’s a vicious poem, full of “Ripping the ears off of hussars and pissing in the wounds.”
We’re born with an urge to pillage, to travel. Creative destruction. Destructive creation.
Perhaps I liked the book more than I thought I did.
April 24, 2009
As a lover of poetry, I think August Kleinzahler is one the best contemporary poets writing
A couple of quotes:
1. from An Englishman Abroad (for Christopher Logue)
"The talk-radio host is trying to shake the wacko
with only a minute left
to get in the finance and boner-pill spots
before signing off"
2. Epistle VIII
"There's good reason why the folks you find up-country tend
to be dull.
It's because they spend their days talking to animals, you know."
3. Christmas in Chinatown
"One reads that the digestive wind passed by cattle
is many times more destructive to the atmosphere
than all of the aerosol cans combined.
How does one measure such a thing?
The world has been coming to an end
for 5,000 years. If not tomorrow,
surely, one day very soon."
A couple of quotes:
1. from An Englishman Abroad (for Christopher Logue)
"The talk-radio host is trying to shake the wacko
with only a minute left
to get in the finance and boner-pill spots
before signing off"
2. Epistle VIII
"There's good reason why the folks you find up-country tend
to be dull.
It's because they spend their days talking to animals, you know."
3. Christmas in Chinatown
"One reads that the digestive wind passed by cattle
is many times more destructive to the atmosphere
than all of the aerosol cans combined.
How does one measure such a thing?
The world has been coming to an end
for 5,000 years. If not tomorrow,
surely, one day very soon."
March 27, 2009
As with many poetry collections, most of it didn't do much for me, but there were 4 or 5 poems that were absolutely incredible. Thus, 4 stars. Still, I much prefer Kleinzahler as a (highly poetic) prose writer than as a poet, I think.
August 20, 2007
A good book, but not my favorite from Kleinzahler. Worth having, but for me, only in addition to Green Sees Things in Waves or Red Sauce, Whiskey & Snow, not as substitute.
December 23, 2013
Kleinzahler has an amazing command of language. He deftly pivots from the diction of a museum curator to that of a longshoreman and back again. Brilliant imagery. Highly recommend this collection.
March 27, 2008
i will be reading and rereading this book for a while.
June 26, 2013
A good use of language most of the time but I'm afraid I just didn't get it.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews