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Yale Series of Younger Poets
Living in the Resurrection
The winning volume in the 1994 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Living in the Resurrection by T. Crunk. As James Dickey, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, says in the foreword, "Here is that rare phenomenon, a writer of instinctive formal vision. His real reverence for the simple objects of the everyday world, their ability to present cup, tree, and hand both as they seem and as they are with a kind of mystical iconic starkness, is a quality uniquely Mr. Crunk's. That this starkness eventually begins to warp into the surreal and ultimately windows into the Luminous Beyond, is additional sanction for gratitude." Reliquaria 1. Found Hand-Painted on a Tin Flue Cover Ribbon of black crape draped on a door knob like broken strings hanging from a loom with the Weep not. What do I need of this world? 2. S. P. Dinsmoor Describes His Tomb I have made myself a coffin with a glass lid. By the door of my grave house I have set a cement angel and a stone jug. When I see the host coming down, the lid will―fly open and I will sail out into the air like a locust. If I am called above, the angel will help me―on my way. If I have to go below, I will grab my jug and fill it with water somewhere on the road down. Meantime, every day I pray―O Lord teach me that I am but earth, a hollow vessel of clay, only a wisp of thy breath against my emptiness. 3. They have yet to figure out the name of the church two men diving in Barkley Lake around Cain's Mill a few years ago found the whole steeple of cross and all half-buried in the mud shallows.
- GenresPoetry
70 pages, Paperback
First published November 29, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 21, 2008
T. Crunk, Living in the Resurrection (Yale, 1995)
It has been a century since the Yale Series of Younger Poets published its first book. They have been of inconsistent quality over the years, but they do tend to release more books that shine than they do books that thud. Living in the Resurrection, the 1994 selection introduced by the mighty James Dickey, is definitely one of the former.
Crunk, born and raised in backwoods Kentucky in a highly Baptist family, draws (as most poets do) on his childhood for much of what he writes, though the poems never take on that "confessional" feel one gets from the Beats, for example; instead, Crunk invests his work with a quiet power, a willingness to say his piece and let the images that form in our heads do all the real talking. In other words, Crunk has a real understanding of what poetry is, rather than taking it and attempting to use it as a tool to do whatever it is he wants to do.
"The river is a wound in the earth.
The river is the clay-red blood of love
pulling its silence through us....
And the soul is a small glass boat setting out."
("Baptism")
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the book is its middle section, comprised of pieces of what is now termed "flash fiction," that proves Crunk can more than ably take his poetic voice and transfer it to the fictive form, keeping the work just as image-oriented and compelling:
"My mother said later that, to the shovel operators, we must have looked like some delegation from out of town that couldn't find the picnic. Or else the funeral. Not so bad my brother and me jumping the fence, or my father, but then my mother, and all of us helping my grandfather over, and finally my grandmother deciding she wanted to see, too."
("Visiting the Site of One of the First Churches My Grandfather Pastored")
Wonderful, readable work, and the heralding of a fine new talent. ****
It has been a century since the Yale Series of Younger Poets published its first book. They have been of inconsistent quality over the years, but they do tend to release more books that shine than they do books that thud. Living in the Resurrection, the 1994 selection introduced by the mighty James Dickey, is definitely one of the former.
Crunk, born and raised in backwoods Kentucky in a highly Baptist family, draws (as most poets do) on his childhood for much of what he writes, though the poems never take on that "confessional" feel one gets from the Beats, for example; instead, Crunk invests his work with a quiet power, a willingness to say his piece and let the images that form in our heads do all the real talking. In other words, Crunk has a real understanding of what poetry is, rather than taking it and attempting to use it as a tool to do whatever it is he wants to do.
"The river is a wound in the earth.
The river is the clay-red blood of love
pulling its silence through us....
And the soul is a small glass boat setting out."
("Baptism")
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the book is its middle section, comprised of pieces of what is now termed "flash fiction," that proves Crunk can more than ably take his poetic voice and transfer it to the fictive form, keeping the work just as image-oriented and compelling:
"My mother said later that, to the shovel operators, we must have looked like some delegation from out of town that couldn't find the picnic. Or else the funeral. Not so bad my brother and me jumping the fence, or my father, but then my mother, and all of us helping my grandfather over, and finally my grandmother deciding she wanted to see, too."
("Visiting the Site of One of the First Churches My Grandfather Pastored")
Wonderful, readable work, and the heralding of a fine new talent. ****
February 5, 2018
A stunning collection of poems caught in the tension between loving Home and anticipating its disappearance. It is a poetry of muted nostalgia — never seeming to long for the return of what was, but unwilling to relinquish quiet, everyday, vivid recollections of a time for which he will remain the lone witness until they vanish with him.
Crunk’s poetry has the quality of a worn down, coal country, working class Kentucky pastoralism. It is deeply connected to the land, to the native plants populating the poetic landscape, to the family who made him before exhausting back into the earth that sustained him, to the ordinariness of everyday objects that feel permanent even as they are seen fading.
So much is held in the collection’s epigraph: “home is burning in me” (Lucille Clifton).
And so much again is held in the opening lines of the poem “Reunion” — lines that illuminate the writer’s necessary struggle to imagine a future beyond the roots he loves and knows so well:
“What we mistook for flight / was only the long struggle / to surface ...”
A very powerful, slim collection. Resonated with me a great deal.
Crunk’s poetry has the quality of a worn down, coal country, working class Kentucky pastoralism. It is deeply connected to the land, to the native plants populating the poetic landscape, to the family who made him before exhausting back into the earth that sustained him, to the ordinariness of everyday objects that feel permanent even as they are seen fading.
So much is held in the collection’s epigraph: “home is burning in me” (Lucille Clifton).
And so much again is held in the opening lines of the poem “Reunion” — lines that illuminate the writer’s necessary struggle to imagine a future beyond the roots he loves and knows so well:
“What we mistook for flight / was only the long struggle / to surface ...”
A very powerful, slim collection. Resonated with me a great deal.
July 31, 2009
I read Living in the Resurrection by T. Crunk on a recommendation, and I am glad I did. Combining religion and folklife, the poet explores Appalachia in its beauty and its resilience. My favorite poems are the ones found in the middle section of this book -- where the poets in a series of prose poems explores the world around him with such titles as "Visiting a Lost Aunt at the Jefferson Davis Hotel, Elkton" and "Visiting My Grandmother at Oak Lawn." I found that the poem, "Visiting the Site of One of the First Churches My Grandfather Pastored" as especially profound. In this poem, the speaks states, "Years later I will remember my grandfather saying that they strip/away the land but all they put back is the dirt." This book was published in 1995 -- the poem written even before this date. How especially prophetic.
November 16, 2007
I liked this collection much better reading it again.
Lovely quiet from a disappearing world of Appalachian hollers and river baptisms.
It's so hard to write fidelity, to write tenderness (a theme I'm on), and T. Crunk does.
Also, his name is T. CRUNK. Crazy drunk.
Lovely quiet from a disappearing world of Appalachian hollers and river baptisms.
It's so hard to write fidelity, to write tenderness (a theme I'm on), and T. Crunk does.
Also, his name is T. CRUNK. Crazy drunk.
May 14, 2012
Favorites: "Christmas Morning," "February," "Reliquaria," "Charity," "Summer Evening," "The Mirror," and "Leaving"
I have never read another living poet who I've felt was such a kindred spirit in what sort of language and image fascinates.
I have never read another living poet who I've felt was such a kindred spirit in what sort of language and image fascinates.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews