Greg Keeler has gradually gained a larger audience over the past decade by producing poetry that is elegant, humorous and acute. Keeler's world - that of a traveler, a member of a family, a man by a river - is recognizable to all, but slightly off center.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Here is a new hatch of Keeler poems and they are fuzzy monsters filled with wit, spit, and intelligence. Rise on them. --Gary Snyder
Greg Keeler is a sensible and serious poet who also happens to be laugh-out-loud funny. Everyone, without exception, should buy this book. --Tim Cahill
Greg Keeler has written lunatic masterpieces. He sings pretty good for such a big guy. He's my absolute favorite practitioner of whatever the hell it is he practices, in all of America. --David Quammen
Greg Keeler is a sensible and serious poet who also happens to be laugh-out-loud funny. Everyone, without exception, should buy this book. --Tim Cahill
Greg Keeler has written lunatic masterpieces. He sings pretty good for such a big guy. He's my absolute favorite practitioner of whatever the hell it is he practices, in all of America. --David Quammen
About the Author
Greg Keeler is the author of poetry collections American Falls and Poetryman, as well as several tapes of satirical songs, and two musical comedies which toured the Northwest. He resides in Bozeman, Montana, where he teaches at Montana State University.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Keeler's book is a gem,
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This review is from: Epiphany at Goofy's Gas (Paperback)
I first read work by Greg Keeler while reviewing his recent novel, Waltzing With the Captain, about friend and fellow writer, Richard Brautigan. A colleague said, "If you like Keeler's writing, you should read his poetry." I followed through on that advice. Keeler's book of poetry, Epiphany at Goofy's Gas is a gem.
Greg Keeler wears a lot of hats. Musician, lyricist, writer, poet, satirist and educator are among his accomplishments. As poet, his work is never predictable or trite. I laughed out loud at his humorous sleight-of-hand one minute, and found myself blinking back tears the next. Keeler excels at sly humor. His"Memo to Blue Gnats" is priceless: We are writing to request a thorough and precise accounting for this behavior since, under standard procedures, you are supposed to be dead. Ditto his "Memo to The Hornets": Those of you who happened to be away at 10:00 A.M. will notice that your nest and your colleagues are missing. I was still contemplating the memoes while reading his seven part anthem, "The Meat." Believe me, this is social commentary and satire on the highest order. A hint regarding content can be found in the first three lines: Once more the meat converges on Atlantic City for the annual selection of the meatiest of the meat. But Keeler's work is more than simply caustic satire and sly self-examination. He also provides moments of rare beauty, as found in two lines of a poem about his dying grandmother in "Grandma Wulz": ...there is more grace in this flesh than death could possibly know.... And the musings of a lonely woman in "The Fisherman's Wife" brought a crush of empathetic understanding: Don't think of the garden unplanted or the stars unseen when dawn comes. I've trailed my footprints like obsolete currency down the sand where you left me so often. In between the laughter and lumps in the throat, Keeler dangles clear cut visions of joy then snatches them away via contrasting moments of reality. I've heard it said the mark of a good wordsmith is that their words haunt readers long after the book has been read. Greg Keeler's work more than qualifies if Epiphany at Goofy's Gas is an example.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Delightfully Accessible and Masterful,
By
This review is from: Epiphany at Goofy's Gas (Paperback)
Greg Keeler strikes a balance between what another great Montana poet Richard Hugo referred to as the private poet and the public poet. For the private poet words mean something to the writer that they don't mean to the reader. Regrettably most of the exalted poets of the 20th century were private poets. With the public poet's words, what you see is what you get (i.e., the emotional contents of the words are the same for the writer as for the reader). While Keeler's poems are intensely personal, and seemingly private (e.g., he often using family member's names), the observations, anxieties and the sometimes playful, sometimes sardonic sense of humor all resonate with the reader. Keeler's work is delightfully accessible and masterful (e.g., He makes dying in a La-Z-Boy chair seem as other-worldly and significant as an astronaut being catapulted into outer-space).
0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Keeler, trying hard,
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This review is from: Epiphany at Goofy's Gas (Paperback)
Greg Keeler wants to have his poems mean something; at every turn, he's trying to define the indefinable, which is the job of every poet worth his salt. Unfortunately, too often these poems simply work by the numbers instead of shocking and surprising us with the sense of bewildering discovery that this poem holds the truth. At times, the poems are simply derivative; his poem on "The Guilt Bug" is a spiritual rip-off of Philip Larkin's paean to the inherited complexes one gets from parents, "This Be the Verse." His memo poems are very like the poems William Carlos Williams wrote on his little prescription pads. He works in the confessional mode, but has none of the nuttiness that the confessional mode requires to be truly shocking. Overall, there are moments when I enjoyed his folksy twists away from the poetic, but nothing stuck in my head as truly marvelous.
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