"I don't recall where I found the rare, out-of-print "Complete Poems" by Kenneth Fearing, but I recall I'd pivoted to tracking down his poetry once I finished his better-known novel, The Big Clock, an absolute masterstroke of the noir genre, and someone on an internet message board was rhapsodizing his poetry, calling it underrated and largely unknown.
The discovery of the collection is informed by the same avid curiosity for the obscure and unsung that informs my role as an advocate for the same. Fearing was an alcoholic who lived in the city. His poems are by turns tough, biblical, stark, and lushly lyrical and ballad-like. "Bankers and priests and clerks and thieves, Fear and death and money and rage, They are always there, in electric-lights, in bill-boards, In churches, theaters, bar-rooms, cabarets, In the moon--" from "George Martin" exemplifies the reach of the collection, whimsical and starry-eyed yet rooted in urban blight, and direct, as if grabbing one by the lapels through a fog. Given to wild fits of abandon, receding into the mythology of the quotidian jarringly juxtaposed with the flinty street wisdom of poverty and collectivist drunken reverie, his poetry is a lodestar because it reminds me that these works are meant to survive us, however wretched and world-weary we become.
Our lives are ennobled and enshrined by its suffering that paints the life romantic and vivid on our lids."
- Manuel Marrero, founder of ExPat Press (expatpress.com)
Comments
Post a Comment