Skip to main content

KK in IN

 Poets from Indiana, Karen Kovacik

This one, yes, this poet is fully Indiana. She was born in East Chicago, grew up in Highland, worked in Indianapolis, and lived in Crown Point. She even held the Indiana Poet Laureate position for a term. I suspect that sometimes her own work gets overshadowed by the wonderful translation work she does of Polish poets, but she's a excellent poet on her own. In fact, many classic images of The Region show up in her work, including some nice portraits of life both as a child and later as an adult coming to terms with her Polish heritage.  

One of my favorites comes from her book Beyond the Velvet Curtain, and it's titled "Babel." Here's an excerpt. 

Scum from the pickle crock, dumplings with plum
the Slovak uncles tossing old Stephen to the celing,
while the American daddy I thought was so smart
shrieked dobry, dobry, like a dim bird
from Bratislava, and Babcia flapped
her veined, impatient hands at him. 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

KR from IN

Poets from Indiana, Kenneth Rexroth Yes, Mr. anti-establishment himself, Kenneth Rexroth, started his life in South Bend, Indiana, and was there until 14 when he headed off to Chicago and then bounced around for years until he ended up in San Francisco.  Yes, that same Rexroth who emceed the reading off Howl , who corresponded with Pound, Whalen, Levertov, Oppen, Synder, and others. That same Rexroth who championed the art of translation and was famously antiwar and antigovernment. Indiana.  One of my favorite poems of his is "The Bad Old Days." You can find the entire poem on the Poetry Foundation page , but here is a taste. The summer of nineteen eighteen    I read  The Jungle  and  The Research Magnificent.  That fall    My father died and my aunt    Took me to Chicago to live.    The first thing I did was to take    A streetcar to the stockyards.    In the winter afternoon,    Gritty and fetid, I walked Through the filthy snow, through the    Squalid streets, looking shyl
Post a Comment
Read more

JM in IN

Poets from Indiana, John Matthias Wait, that's John Matthias. I know, you're probably like, why wasn't he the first poet on the list for Indiana? After all, he studied under John Berryman and Yvor Winters. He rubbed elbow patches with Robert Hass and Robert Pinsky. He was at Notre Dame when the MFA started, edited The Notre Dame   Review , and joked around with other amazing writers like Steve Tomasula and Joyelle McSweeney (I suppose, though I haven't heard any stories). And, finally, he's the poet that Robert Archambeau is always talking about, so you know his work is amazing .  He grew up in Ohio and went to The Ohio State U and Stanford, but he's been in South Bend long enough to be claimed as someone with "deep Indiana roots." I'm sure that some of his many books were written along the banks of the St. Joseph River.  One of my favorites is "After Quevedo." Quevedo himself writes insightfully about death, and Matthias' poem picks
Post a Comment
Read more

SM from IN

Poets from Indiana, Sheila Murphy   Wait, Indiana, what? I know that Sheila Murphy lives in Phoenix now. And yes, she's published books with Green Integer, Meritage Press, Pavement Saw, The University of Alberta Press, and many, many more not in Indiana. In fact, she's published so many books that I've lost count. Visual works, haibuns, hay(na)kus, ghazals--her books cover the field of innovative poetry, and the rumor/uber myth about her is that she writes so much that she burns out her computer keyboards quickly. Wow! Yep, that same super talented and imminently brilliant Sheila Murphy was born in Mishawaka and then moved to South Bend at eight. Her parents were both educators in the area, one at Notre Dame and one at the South Bend Community Schools. In fact, she lived in Indiana until she was 23. So, yes, Indiana poet. You can find her work all over the Internet (though the Poetry Foundation only has one poem, come on!). Her work is not for the faint of heart. She requir
Post a Comment
Read more