Kelly Krumrie
This is one of the places where I read, especially now that it's winter. The furniture and objects here (not the books) were all given to me by someone else, or I found them second-hand, including the cat.
Readings
A book of poetry that was important to you when you were starting out as a poet and how has that shifted or remained constant for you over time
Samuel Beckett, The Complete Short Prose (1929-1989) (Grove, 1995)
I realize this is a bit of a slide, not poetry technically. Beckett was recommended to me by the graduate student who taught my Introduction to Creative Writing class my freshman year of college, which, for those counting, was in 2002. This was after I had submitted a one-act play where two characters called Pim and Pam lobbed a ball back and forth over a very high wall. I can’t remember what they were talking about, but you can see why he made the connection. I later took a seminar where we read most of Beckett’s published works, and I wrote my final paper on his late prose series “Fizzles.” When I go back now, it’s like I’ve just been writing fizzles since. I mean this mostly in the way I think about sentences’ internal constructions—and the ways they can link up to others—and how he manages to keep everything still: “As if even in the dark eyes closed not enough and perhaps even more than ever necessary against that no such thing the further shelter of the hand. Leave it so all quite still or try listening to the sounds all quite still head in hand listening for a sound.”
A book of poetry that was important to you at a specific moment in your life (i.e. a breakup, a death, during pregnancy, when your children were young, during illness, etc. etc.)
Clark Coolidge, The Crystal Text (The Figures, 1986 / Sun & Moon, 1995 / City Lights, 2023)
I was sent a PDF of the Sun & Moon version during the height of 2020 quarantine when I was feeling like I was about to fracture into hundreds of refractive, clean-edged bits. (This is that: “I want / to hear not as if, but that.”) I printed it; it’s all wrinkled and written over. I was writing a series of prose poems about sand and its mechanisms—both real and imagined—and observation, what’s known—and mostly not known—by looking. (“And if I am afraid, then what? Spin the crystal.”) I also wrote an essay then about wilderness and collecting rocks; I’ve got them all over. I easily folded into the book’s lattice. There’s nothing I love more than sitting with the same thing, re-seeing it.
A work of art/performance/film/album/piece of music/etc.
I’m feeling kind of secretive, locked up, and I’m at the beginning of something I don’t want to jinx, but I’ll confess that I’ve been looking at a lot of white paintings lately.
A book in which you were interested by the use of imagery
Joanna Howard & Joanna Ruocco, Field Glass (Sidebrow, 2017)
A prose series of movements and boundaries. I’m continually interested in this book’s images and its times and tenses. I once tried to track it, but that’s not really what it’s for (“Is it resistance if disguised as trees?”). How it’s looking as a book, as a kind of field glass, is really something singular (“Fleeting, a moment of singular focus. The lenses aligned.”). I’m tempted to pair it not just with the other texts listed here (you can see a pattern forming) but also with Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them, which is such a super underrated novel—generally and in terms of vision. I’m very interested in vision, repetition, and discipline.
Writings
Lax Ceramicist
tile
black
black
grass
black
black
good
I’m
I’m
I’m
good
good
on
on the
tile
tile
I
bake
bake
black
black
black
grass
grass
on
on the
tile
tile
on
on the
fire
fire
I
I
fire
tile
I
over
on
and
tile
tile
good
and
good
bake
black
black
my
my
black
grass
my
my
heart
black
I
shovel
fire
over
shovel
black
on
black
I
fire
black
and
good
bake
and
black
I
tile
black
black
I’m
black
black
grass
fire
tile
and
grass
tile
fire
fire
grass
good
good
and
yellow
shovel
yellow
over
fire
slow
for
over
fire
I
I
I
on
I
over
I
I
I
over
heart
heart
my
heart
good
and
yellow
heart
black
on
black
black
black
heart
black
black
on the
shovel
Kelly Krumrie is the author of Math Class (Calamari Archive, 2022). Her work can be found in journals such as Harp & Altar, Annulet, and a row of trees. She holds a PhD in English & Literary Arts from the University of Denver, and she lives in Denver. She was recommended to Etcetera by Toby Altman.