In Watch Your Head 2, Kevin Rabas offers more of his poetry of self care while recovering from a brain injury. Even as the poems are older, the reader can still trace back to how they are Kevin Rabas reflections on life, class, position: "I think of the men / I could have been- / if my mother had not / led me to the water's edge / of books." Also in this collection, Rabas shares his playwriting. Just as his poems reflect a Midwestern deep life, his plays do, too. His wit and charm shine, like in "Lemonade." While the conversation between a young man getting a haircut and the stylist turns to Jazz, she asks if Charlie Parker, Miles, Coltrane, Keith Jarrett are any good. His response: "Let me tell ya, they make Kenny G look like Fabio just holding a horn." As a long time Kevin Rabas fan, I love this rich volume of poems written two decades ago that still holds up today. If you are new to his writing, Watch Your Head 2 is just a great introduction to it as any of his collected books.
-Dennis Etzel Jr., Everything is Ephemera
Take a twenty-year step back - a transformative time for Kevin Rabas. Between a head injury, divorce, friends parting ways, and meeting the love of his life, these poems bring the reader through some of the deepest introspection and observation we have seen from Rabas yet. Some of these poems emanate a warm light and tickle of romance, bravery and confidence-the curiosities of young adulthood. Other poems are reminders that even when all seems lost, we can use our poetic voice to find the way home.
-Linzi Garcia, Thank You
I wrote these poems in 1999 and 2000, while I was going through a divorce and recovering from a head injury. (I was in a pick up basketball game and got knocked down.) I was also unemployed and living with my parents again.
With the help of Linzi Garcia, I excavated these poems and revised them. They have a kind of simple, raw power, so I wanted to share them with others.
This book also includes a handful of plays I wrote from 1996-2009. The plays seem to follow and speak to the themes and subjects of these poems. Also, they share many of the same characters. In terms of time, there is overlap with when many of the poems were written. They're from roughly the same period in my life. I hope you enjoy reading these plays, and I hope a few theatre companies take them on and produce them. (If I can, I will come watch.) These are my first plays.
It was curious revisiting this material, which is a sequel to my earlier book which covers some of this same ground, Watch Your Head. Many thanks to Curtis Becker, who selected, edited, and published both books.
These poems were written in Shawnee and Manhattan, Kansas, as well as in Kansas City; Plainfield, Vermont; Yonkers and New York City; and at Yellowstone National Park. I traveled about more back then. Was sometimes rootless.
-Kevin Rabas, 29 January 2020, 9 am, Emporia, Kansas
