Classic Rough News (Phoenix Poets) - Hardcover

In the Place of Stories

You tend to lose yourself here, friend. Come in . . .
Come in to the dark, come in to the music playing,
Come in to not knowing who you may become.
Here in this bar, The Nut House, you hear the titles
Of a thousand stories, the head is dizzy with them-
A whole life latent in a little line-
Broken off by the cash register, the click of balls,
A nearmiss score, another record. "Hell,
I've been cheating on her since our divorce."
"Ain't there a family man in this fucking place?"
"Don't play me for a sap"-each wounded cry
Gone as soon as said; teasing out of us
Incomparable ghosts-"I said I was a fairy, man,
Not a magician." You see what I mean.

With a half-dozen books of poetry published to date, Kenneth Fields distills some forty years of teaching and writing about poetry into Classic Rough News, a collection of fresh sonnets and sonnet-like lyrics that attests to both Fields's skills as a writer and the inexhaustible possibilities of the form.

Classic Rough News follows a skeptical, cosmopolitan, intelligent, poetic presence aware that its carefully constructed veneer could crumble at any moment. In poems that mine interior dialogue for the discovery of great truths, Fields conveys feelings of awkwardness, incompleteness, conflict, and insanity-all in finely crafted verse. Ironic and skeptical, the voice in these poems records the flux of the mind, ruefully acknowledging how easy it is to deceive oneself with mixed emotions. Fully mature and unconcerned about impressions, Classic Rough News is grounded in erudition and humor, revealing how tradition and talent can push one another in unexpected directions.