The Search for the Reason Why: New and Selected Poems (Harmony Series) by Tom Kryss

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T.L. Kryss is an outsider's outsider and as sweet a poet as I've ever encountered. He was part of the Cleveland poetry scene in the Sixties that had d.a. levy as its catalyst and got hammered hard by the police...What Tom Kryss does, more than any poet I know, is strip away excess and cut to the bone. He staked out a modest turf and then hunkered down and stayed there. So that what he writes is unencumbered and fraught with the particular, which is the unique, which is the only way to get a show more handle on the universal. What he writes always gives you something and never takes anything away. -John Bennett (Vagabond Press, from the "Introduction") ---------- It is heartening to see Bottom Dogs Press join in the effort to preserve the masterpieces that got lost in the 20th Century's howls and whimpers, juvenile boasts and frostbitten theories. Tom Kryss is a poet who sees the world as puzzles within puzzles. The puzzles can be Rubic's cubes or jigsaw pieces that form an image of the Berlin Wall or the boundless energy of a little girl who can't remain confined in her grandfather's lap when they visit her father in prison. Kryss' narratives and parables include some of the best most open descriptions of the mimeo revolution yet written, and memories of his friend and mentor, d.a.levy. As a poet completely free from pretension, trendiness, and poses, Kryss' verse achieves a cleanliness which many of his contemporaries strove for but could not manage. Line after well paced and modulated line offers fascinating stories and meditations without strain or waste. In one of the many odd twists of fortune that surround the neglect of this opus, Kryss may be the supreme master of patience when that gift has been nearly forgotten. Aside from the satisfactions of reading Kryss' poems, he may be giving his readers a model of how to talk to each other. -Karl Young show less