Beast
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About this ebook
Reviewing Charles S. Kraszewski's verse cycle Beast in Odra, Mieczyslaw Orski speaks of the cycle's "majesty, coupled with its large dose of refreshing irony and humor" such as one finds in the "grand narratives of the poetic art." He compares Kraszewski's poetic voice with that of John Ashberry. Readers of modern American poetry may find more similarities with the Jack Kerouac of the Duluoz Legend. Not solely because Kraszewski's Beast explores the familar, yet suddenly vanished culture of the ethnic enclaves of the 1960s Northeast, but also because of the haunting, incantatory rhythms of poems such as "Loveland Pass" and "Here is no god but Mammon," so redolent of the Book of Sketches and Big Sur at their hypnotic best. Charles S. Kraszewski is 2013 laureate of the Union of Polish Writers Abroad (London).
Charles Kraszewski
Poet, translator, literary critic.
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Beast - Charles Kraszewski
Charles S. Kraszewski
Beast
Copyright © 2014, Charles S. Kraszewski
Smashwords Edition
Originally published as a print book in 2013 by
Plan B Press
P.O. Box 4067, Alexandria, VA 22303
All rights reserved
Cover designed by Stefan Tejk.
Beast
Charles S. Kraszewski
Qui genus iactat suum aliena laudat.
Por eso aun estoy en el lugar de siempre
En la misma ciudad y con la misma gente
Contents
i. Pennsylvania
ii. Leonora
iii. She Never Read Seneca...
iv. The Border Ran Here
v. Fall the First
vi. ...and You’d Think That I Never Had Either
vii. And When a Train Goes By It’s Such a Sad Sound
viii. The Name Thomas is Too Good For Me
ix. Fall the Second
x. Interlude: Hidden in Baskets
xi. Turns Out He Wasn’t Quetzalcoatl After All
xii. We Fill Up the Ruptured Causeways with Debris
xiii. But It Stood Still For Joshua, And Backwards Ran For Old Hezekiah
xiv. For Today’s Text, We Take Psalm 8:4 (Fall the Penultimate)
xv. While in Disbelief They Chanted Hol-ly-wood! Hol-ly-wood!
xvi. Our Minds May Have Been Sleeping, but Our Hearts Weren’t
xvii. Here is no god but Mammon and Damnéd is his Profit (All Fall Down)
xviii. Loveland Pass
i. Pennsylvania
The hills are all culm banks.
Stripling birches pierce the flaky black crust
with roots thin and sharp
as the fingers of pallid, tubercular women
poking holes for seeds that will never germinate.
Even the poor children neglect the collieries.
They stand before the crusty windows
and the stones fall from their dirty hands
in utter apathy.
A ragged, gray feral cat darts its tick-tormented head
above the rim of a treadless tire
lying exhausted among deer pellets and tiny fossilized ferns.
ii. Leonora
The summer sky was yellow
when Black Lung finally manned up
and stood before my Grandfather in the garden.
Ahem, look here, Kazimierz… Sir,
(rubbing the furry leaves of the tomato plants
that smelled like green shoe polish
between greasy finger and fat thumb),
"It’s like this: six months. Maybe more,
maybe less."
Dziadek just stood there, coughing, staring, absent.
Well then,
Black Lung fidgeted,
kicking the dry gray clods
as crumbly as worm shit,
"I’ll be off now. See