Ken Waldman
And Shadow Remained
Paperback Edition
ISBN 1-886350-46-9
perfect bound
96 Page
Limited first edition of 1650 copies
$12.00
Poems in this collection have appeared in 5 A.M., Black Bear Review, Blue Mesa Review, Borderlands, Cape Rock, Chiron Review, Connecticut River Review, Convolvulus, Crucible, Exquisite Corpse, Flyway, The MacGuffin, Many Mountains Moving, Marlboro Review, Nerve Cowboy, Painted Hills Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Poet Lore, Sou'wester, Willow Review, Writers' Forum, Zone 3 and many other fine journals.
"The poems in And Shadow Remained are Ken Waldman's best--they're dark, sad, and knowing, fragmented snapshots of family regret, busted relationships, and a man moving through the harsh Alaskan terrain as he tries to stay warm with a song. Insights aren't sufficient, good intentions never good enough, as we learn in the emblematic explosions of "Depression Glass" or the desecrated bible in the harrowing "My Father's Gift." There's humor, too, though, to distract from hunger (who can resist a poem titled "When Meat Was Meat" of Satan Found!"?), and, finally, enough food here to feed a lost army. The poet offers recipe after recipe that he assures us will comfort and sustain."
-- Gaylord Brewer
"From an unhappy barmaid escaping her Juneau job mid-shift "she'll duck out at 10/leaving the bar shorthanded" to his family of origin in suburban Philadelphia, Waldman's moving third collection charts the shadows and light of human experience, celebrating 'the heart/that red cask/of hunger, light.'"
-- Lisa D. Chavez
Counter-wit
Your problem,
she told him,
is you want
everyone to be
like you.
And yours,
he told her,
is you are.
When Meat Was Meat
1920, when meat was meat, when retirees
in St. Pete, Florida's sunshine town,
played a mean cutthroat shuffleboard
at Mirror Lake, when the century
was rickety rickety as a cable car
climbing some San Francisco street,
her eyes shone, my grandma, prettiest
female sweet in the history of Benjy's
Fine Time Cajun Cuisine, her eyes
like opals the moment she spotted him,
her oldest dream, a real Frenchman,
to take an open table in her section,
this young man, my grandpa, who ordered
gumbo and jambalaya both, singing
he had found the queen of queens,
her honeyed breath layering the neatest,
freshest, best-looking, most perfect helping
of whiskey-bread pudding he'd ever seen.
Read a review of this book at BOOKSLUT.COM
