A dramatic and lyrical book of a writer's first awakening to his craft of poetry, through the death of his father.
Winner of the Friends of Literature,
Robert & Hazel Freguson Memorial Award, 1989
John Frederick Nims, poet
former editor of Poetry Magazine:
"[Koenig's] poems ... find emotions and experiences that might be merely ordinary for other people. No trivial subjects here! [He] seems to find friends -- and family -- where others would not. It's an emotional universe ... and that is good to come across in a world in many ways so chilly."
Steven Spender
British Queen's Gold Crown for Poetry:
"...great force, insight, truthfulness, and also economy of phrase and form ... clearly seen in situations which strike the reader as original and yet as having very wide relevance."
First Poem On A Father’s Death
Not stone any more
The flesh on your bones,
Only gentle loam,
Warm to the touch,
Bound for the earth,
Soul unsoiled,
You sailed in your white shroud, smooth,
The hull of your ship
Slipped down
Through troughs
Of one-time sea sediment,
Now no impediment.
Green Whistle
. . . twenty years plastering
Picture post cards
On the kiosk of a career,
Here, where the wind’s icy knife
Whittles them away, one at a time,
With leaves from the trees. . .
. . .Twenty years of quaint attempts
To fix a place for myself with others,
(I can’t remember
Exactly how I planned it,)
But walking here along the frozen lake,
Alone except for a steel-hearted jogger
And a student photographer
Of the moon,
Was not what I planned,
Nor that I would like being alone,
Free to imagine what I might become
Or what might come next,
Still afraid of the two old men
In the Chinese restaurant
On Davis Street,
Afraid that one of them is me,
But whether it is or not,
Willing to let the moon
Turn into a hot, white cup of tea,
Held in the hands of a boy
The wind has whittled,
From a brown branch
Down to a green whistle of joy.