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Stumbling Blocks: Roman Poems
Through six earlier books Karl Kirchwey has rewarded readers with poems of great musicality, visual richness, and historical resonance. Stumbling Roman Poems represents a culmination of his “formal mastery”—an honor often too loosely bestowed in contemporary American poetry, but one Kirchwey thoroughly earns.
As in his 1998 New York Times Notable Book The Engrafted Word , the city of Rome becomes a lens through which to understand the contemporary human experience and the upheavals of human loss. Stumbling Blocks takes as its starting point the shattered ancient Roman ruins described in Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay's celebrated sonnet—a landscape of death feeding upon itself and restored to life in the imagination of each successive generation to salvage its own narratives.
Kirchwey builds new arches and mythological intersections in exquisite poems that take long walks in the Eternal City, through landscapes far away and deep within. This gorgeous collection takes us back in time and brings us forward through our Old and New Worlds, revealing through the religion of art both beauty and atrocity.
As in his 1998 New York Times Notable Book The Engrafted Word , the city of Rome becomes a lens through which to understand the contemporary human experience and the upheavals of human loss. Stumbling Blocks takes as its starting point the shattered ancient Roman ruins described in Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay's celebrated sonnet—a landscape of death feeding upon itself and restored to life in the imagination of each successive generation to salvage its own narratives.
Kirchwey builds new arches and mythological intersections in exquisite poems that take long walks in the Eternal City, through landscapes far away and deep within. This gorgeous collection takes us back in time and brings us forward through our Old and New Worlds, revealing through the religion of art both beauty and atrocity.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
Published October 15, 2017
7 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 8, 2020
Stumbling Blocks: Roman Poems by Karl Kirchwey is a collection of poetry centering on Rome. Kirchwey received a BA from Yale College and an MA from Columbia University. Rich with mythical and historical allusion, Kirchwey’s formally assured verse explores themes of loss and origin.
This is a rather mixed collection with many works written as prose rather than poetry. The lines between prose and poetry can be blurry at times but most prose poems express imagery and a lyrical sense. Several of the poems in this collection could easily pass for prose or even informal conversation rather than poetry. The collection opens strong with "Thought Experiment." Caesar's last breath of air is still circulating around the earth. In fact, a molecule of that last breath may be in your lungs right now. "Janiculum Passage", although very much written in prose, captures some of the imagery of Rome. The title poem is also present and explains itself in a historical sense.
The collection is hard to classify. It is interesting in its history and descriptions of Rome. I came away feeling that I learned a bit about Rome, ancient to the present. I can't say that I will remember this as poetry or as an informal history or cultural lesson.
This is a rather mixed collection with many works written as prose rather than poetry. The lines between prose and poetry can be blurry at times but most prose poems express imagery and a lyrical sense. Several of the poems in this collection could easily pass for prose or even informal conversation rather than poetry. The collection opens strong with "Thought Experiment." Caesar's last breath of air is still circulating around the earth. In fact, a molecule of that last breath may be in your lungs right now. "Janiculum Passage", although very much written in prose, captures some of the imagery of Rome. The title poem is also present and explains itself in a historical sense.
The collection is hard to classify. It is interesting in its history and descriptions of Rome. I came away feeling that I learned a bit about Rome, ancient to the present. I can't say that I will remember this as poetry or as an informal history or cultural lesson.
October 31, 2017
This book has a good praise page, although the praise for me is a bit misleading. With the title, it says it's "poems". By reading previous reviews as well reassured my feeling that it's a weird style of writing, not exactly poems, but more like prose, or simply put "enter" at each sentence of an article. The poems could echo very less as I was reading them. For instance, the poem "Aeaea", it feels more like a play of format, rather than poems. Nowadays, it's hard to find good poems. It could be better. In addition, in not one poems, the poet writes about "Roman temples, bath" and so on. To my opinion, it shows a bit lack of symbolic meanings or whatsoever. Romans are so much more than bath, temples, brothel, and so on.
May 20, 2025
Kirchwey’s finely crafted poems focus on his time in Rome. The subjects pulse with the same light breathiness of daily life in one of Earth’s most beautiful cities: buying a jar of marmalade, meditating on a rotten abandoned car. But other subjects could feel a bit stiff. One of the book’s most dominant motifs is the architectural features which reconstruct the city in verse. But although Kirchwey is prodigiously talented, not even he can make pendentives and apses interesting for me.
His rhymes are another example of stiffness—like rhyming “neat” and “faucet.” It goes without saying that, in the cordoned-off world of contemporary poetry, rhyme is almost universally reviled. But Kirchwey has found a way to rhyme in such a delicate manner, it almost goes unnoticed. But whether or not you’re here for how he rhymes, this book has a gentle luminousness which shouldn’t go unnoticed.
His rhymes are another example of stiffness—like rhyming “neat” and “faucet.” It goes without saying that, in the cordoned-off world of contemporary poetry, rhyme is almost universally reviled. But Kirchwey has found a way to rhyme in such a delicate manner, it almost goes unnoticed. But whether or not you’re here for how he rhymes, this book has a gentle luminousness which shouldn’t go unnoticed.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews