First Kingdoms: Poems from a Vanishing Landscape

By Ken Lauter

Like William Blakes Songs of
Innocence and Experience, these
poems evoke childhood moments
from the dream-like states of infancy
to the early exhilarations of nature,
animals, games, school, sex, and
the earliest discoveries of love. Such
elusive memories are screened through
the double lens of the boys innocence
and the grown mans more complex
awareness.
In exploring the world of the poets
personal history, First Kingdoms
also records and celebrates a type
of childhood less and less known to
todays digitally-obsessed generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479701018

Ken Lauter

Ken Lauter studied with Donald Hall (US Poet Laureate 2006-07) at the University of Michigan, and his work has been compared to Robert Lowell’s. Distinguished poet William Meredith has said that Ken’s poetry displays “a splendid and various gift.” His previous books are: The Other Side, Before the Light (both from BkMk Press, University of Missouri at Kansas City), The Ghosts – Notes from a Field Study, Songs from Walnut Canyon, Grand Canyon Days, Searching for Mr. Stevens, The Structure of the Body, and First Kingdoms – Poems from a Vanishing Landscape (all from Xlibris). He has also written several plays, including The Dancing Apsárás, or Captain Willard’s Blues, a prequel/sequel to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. He has received a Hopwood Award for poetry, an American Academy of Poets Prize, and a Shubert Playwriting Fellowship. He has taught literature and creative writing at four universities and also worked as a mayor’s aide, a university administrator, and a grass-roots environmental activist. Ken is married to poet and neuroscientist Dr. Judy Lauter, author of How Is Your Brain Like a Zebra? — A New Human Neurotypology and A Year of Haiku (both from Xlibris). They currently live in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Ken Lauter.

ISBN:                  Softcover                  978-1-4797-0100-1

                            Ebook                        978-1-4797-0101-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Photo credits

All photos from the author’s collection. Front cover: author at age 4 with parents; backcover: author at age 6 and 60.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

119303

Contents

I

Out on the Lawn after Dark (1)

II

Baby

Crib

Radio

Bathroom

Kitchen

Bedroom

TV

Father

Mother

Piano

III

Mother

Father

Mother

Your House

Furnace

Aunt’s House

Lake

Family Swim

Brothers

Alone

Vacation Bible School

Christmas

IV

Hide and Seek

Father

Swings

Mother

Cowboys and Indians

Marbles

Bicycle Summers

Father

Climbing the Elm

Father

Mother

Second Mother

Twins

Snow

V

School

VI

Cats

Dogs

Fox

Snakes

Horse

Bull

Creek

VII

Camp

Blue Record

Tadpoles

Sex

Monkey Business

Church

Road Work

Sunday Drives

VIII

To the River!

The 1951 Flood

No Joke

The Rifle

Models

The Bomb

The Spider

Life

Reading the Paper-1953

IX

Out on the Lawn after Dark (2)

AFTERWORD

Also by Ken Lauter

The Structure of the Body

Xlibris, 2012

Searching for Mr. Stevens

Xlibris, 2011

Grand Canyon Days

Xlibris, 2011

Songs from Walnut Canyon

Xlibris, 2010

The Ghosts-Notes from a Field Study

Xlibris, 2009

Before the Light

BkMk Press, University of Missouri at Kansas City, 1987

The Other Side

BkMk Press, University of Missouri at Kansas City, 1973

*          *          *

Desperate Quest-A Poet Looks at Sustainability

in Toward a More Livable World: Social Dimensions of Sustainability

Jerry Williams and William Forbes, eds.

Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2012

Knowing Their Names

a one act play for Steven Berkoff

IanFisher.com, 1999

"Laughter, Gender and Death in Berkoff’s Coriolanus"

a critical essay

IanFisher.com, 1999

DEDICATION

for my mother and father

Kathryn Jesse Lauter (1903-1987)

Kenneth Arthur Lauter (1900-1961)

FIRST KINGDOMS

I

It is an illusion that we were ever alive

Lived in the houses of Mothers, arranged ourselves

By our own motions in a freedom of air.

-Wallace Stevens, Seventy Years Later

Out on the Lawn after Dark (1)

In a place that I will never see again, after

the heat has left the grass, after supper

has worn off, and the lights in the houses

have come on low, we bring blankets

for the kids, lawn chairs for the grownups

clinking pitchers of lemonade, and bowls