Passing Through Humansville

by Karen Craigo

In Passing Through Humansville , Karen Craigo builds a rich and embracing vision of life from the bricks of mundane experience. She strikes a surprising and sturdy balance between the pressure of new motherhood on an aging body and the electric energy of a sleepy toddler. With the delicacy of a spider's climb towards the ceiling and the strength of a bending knee, her work illuminates the essential connective tissue of life through a poetic voice that is tirelessly compassionate. Craigo is uniquely observant, picking and weaving common threads of humanity together with unashamed humility. Be it sympathy towards the busy innkeeper of the nativity story, or momentary doubt about whom one is compared to to whom one planned to be, Passing Through Humansville offers alliance by way of a deep human lineage. These poems are filled with a wisdom that is expressly for sharing, an argument meant "to see how all things/are connected by barely a breath."

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Paperback

Published December 20, 2018

About the author

Karen Craigo teaches writing in Springfield, Missouri. She is the nonfiction editor of Mid-American Review, the interviews editor of SmokeLong Quarterly, and an editor of Gingko Tree Review,

Reviews

[grieshaber.reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not much of a poetry fan but oh, how I WANT to be. When a bookshop I follow on Instagram promoted their virtual poet visit with Missouri Poet Laureate, Karen Craigo, that sounded like a reason for me to try some poetry and support a local business and a local artist at the same time. I was happy to purchase Craigo’s book of poetry, Passing Through Humansville, from Pagination Bookshop in Springfield, Missouri.

Born and raised in Missouri, I found Craigo’s poems on motherhood, the mundane, and mortality beautiful and completely relatable.

From ‘Ten Sources of Light”:
“Did I tell you about the night I saw the fireflies?”

From “Field Trip”:
“. . .Certain fall days
the sun can surprise us
with its insistence, can pin us
to the chair, and we picture
those migrating butterflies,
gold, gold, gold, gold,
gone.”

From “Casting a Vote at Rountree Elementary”:
“It always rains on Election Day.
I feel sure of this, just as I’m sure
of the candidate, earnest blue farmer
willing, in this red state, to try . . .”

Craigo’s opening poem is called “Meditation with Cat and Toddler,” and, not surprisingly, it is literally about her toddler and her cat and it is precious and I shared it with my cousin who just got a cat for her toddler.

My favorite poem was “A Small Case Against Perfect Solitude,” which spoke to me as an ode to ambient sounds, as I mentioned in this June 3, 2020, Instagram post. https://www.instagram.com/p/CA_66SxDF-2/

Shouts to independent bookstores, who constantly expose us to new literature.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

These mostly kind of short poems are fine though few of them really blew me away. The primary subjects explored here include motherhood and Christianity, which is fine, but neither subject is one I'm completely enthralled by, so maybe I thought this was kind of blah. There are a couple poems where I did feel more directly addressed, and I'm not sure why. But "Advent" and "The Art of Rhetoric" and a couple others had something going on in them that made them stand out and shine for me.

[Becky Galambos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up as part of my 2019 poetry challenge, as the poet Karen Craigo is Missouri's Poet Laureate. Most of the poems center around small town life, motherhood, and other topics that aren't currently something that speaks to me, but the level of detail and poetrycraft is great.

[Allison Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems blew me away. I feel like I could have written them except I don’t have this talent, so it’s more like Craigo took some of my thoughts and crafted them into amazing poems. So many made me pause and think, and several inspired me to write flash pieces on the theme.

[Alicia Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. They were mostly narrative poems about late motherhood, children, etc. Sweet and small-town homey with glimpses of true heart.

[Donna Mork · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely small collection of poetry about life, children, aging, and the Ozarks.