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August Kleinzahler

Sleeping It Off in Rapid City: Poems, New and Selected Hardcover – April 1, 2008

by August Kleinzahler (Author)

17 ratings

3.9 on Goodreads

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The first broad retrospective of August Kleinzahler’s career, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City gathers poems from his major works along with a rich portion of new poems that visit different voice registers, experiment with form and length, and confirm Kleinzahler as among the most inventive and brilliant poets of our time. Travel—actual and imaginary—remains a passion and inspiration, and in these pages the poet also finds “This sanctified ground / Here, yes, here / The dead solid center of the universe / At the heart of the heart of America.”

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date

April 1, 2008
Dimensions

6.18 x 1.01 x 8.19 inches
ISBN-10

0374265836
ISBN-13

978-0374265830
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August Kleinzahler
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The witty, gritty poet and memoirist Kleinzahler (The Strange Hours Travellers Keep) has produced chiseled, sometimes curt and finely observed free verse for decades. Kleinzahler has lived in Montreal, San Francisco, Vancouver, Portugal and Berlin; his sketches of characters and places from at least four continents include affectionately cynical portraits of hoodlums, odes to the autumn failures of baseball teams and swiftly cinematic depictions of Tartar hordes in medieval Europe, ripping the ears off hussars. Hackensack, N.J.; the foggy Bay Area with its foggier ex-hippies; and northern European lakes and mountains all receive their due in a poetry that aspires to the feel of bebop and the delight of travel writing, that never bores and rarely repeats itself. New poems add to, rather than swerve away from, Kleinzahler's strengths in close observation and all-over-the-map diction, from slang to technical terms. Overheard speech in Above Gower Street, a poem about the loneliness of international travel, ranges from an answering machine's anodyne messages to an explicit sexual come-on; in Vancouver, the neon mermaid over the fish place/ looks best that way, in the rain. This ninth book of poems and first trade press new-and-selected should bring this master of free verse lines even more admirers. (Apr.)
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Review

Praise for The Strange Hours Travelers Keep: "[Kleinzahler's] scope is large, his diction wildly exact, his line inventive, his means varied, and he never condescends." --Maureen N. McLane, The New York Times Book Review "Erudite, restless, intellectually curious, alert to what goes on around him from the moment he opens his eyes in the morning, [Kleinzahler] brings to mind Frank O'Hara . . . Wonderful." --Charles Simic, The New York Review of Books "Kleinzahler mixes the pungent and the delicate, the literary and the colloquial, to create a fine, technicolor-like excess." --John Palattella, The Los Angeles Times

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (April 1, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374265836
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374265830
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.18 x 1.01 x 8.19 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,452,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,430 in American Poetry (Books)

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Mary W. Walters

Kleinzahler Writes Fine Poems

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 31, 2008

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I discovered August Kleinzahler when I became intrigued by an article based on an interview with him in the New York Times a couple of years ago, and then read a poem on-line that made me draw in my breath because he'd described an experience so precisely that I recognized everything about it. I immediately ordered Green Sees Things In Waves, a book that pleased me no end, and now I have ordered and received Sleeping It Off in Rapid City--a beautiful book physically, and one which is also a volume of truly excellent poems. Some of my favourites so far (I'm just finishing Section I) are "Shoot The Freak" and "A Valentine: Regarding the Impracticability of Our Love." In addition to his magical way with words and images, I love the way Kleinzahler keeps the quotidian with him when he writes: it is everywhere in his poems, not crushing his work, but rather informing it. Or, to be more precise, it is as though he brings popular culture and day-to-day events up against larger issues, thereby revealing everything in a new way.

Take the genius of "I went to see McCarthy," in which the narrator lifts off by plane from a sere mid-west America to revisit "old arguments" in Ireland. He leaves behind "a parched bare land of yellow ochre" and enters Ireland ("swaddled in cloud, all grey and green"). The poem reveals McCarthy's town and his country in the way one might buff a brass image--going over the same area until its shape is gradually made bare and deeply shining. Through echoed images and repeated phrases, still trailing bits of the flat and dry Midwest behind us, we gradually enter the green land, its past and its way of telling stories--gradually enter until we are totally immersed in green. In green and green--learning as we go about the heroic battles that are required to come up with a good pat of Skibbereen butter, and that if something sounds good when you say it once, you might as well say it twice.

So I will: Kleinzahler writes fine poems.

22 people found this helpful

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Really a Reader

A Good Voice here and there

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 19, 2014

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I would like to say that there is something fresh and new in these poems. For the most part they are nicely tuned pieces that can possess a startling and unexpected image here and there that brings you out of the expectaions in the modernist voice. Billy Collins offers a more authentic sensibility and Charles Simic has a better ear. Kleinzahler should be read. Some of his evocations of nature. Specifically color in nature are arresting.

One person found this helpful

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Garreth

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 14, 2015

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One of my favorite book of poems, Kleinzahler weaves a thoroughly engaging narrative.

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Richard C. Geschke

And Reading Further, the Light Went On

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 26, 2013

As I read through August Kleinzahler's poems, I was somewhat startled at his interweaving of everyday events along with his at times irreverence and language. Use of common curse words and some sexual innuendo permeates through some of his poems. Also many of his poems left me scratching my head and to its meanings. Many of his works have a definite cadence and rhythm in which as a reader you feel comfortable with, but in the end I found myself looking for any kind of recognition or meaning.
At times I was ready to stop going further, but as I continued to read I found the second half of Kleinzahler's collection to be very riveting indeed. For instance I started to notice that the author was serializing his poems with the same title as if he was Heinrich Heine writing "Germany. A Winter Tale" in Caputs. Only Klenzahler scatters his Caputs in between other poems. Kleinzahler's poem titles throughout this collection of poems are "A History of Western Music" and his collection of numbered "Epistles."
I began to see the cadence and rhythm of the author, along with some of his humor in common everyday language and context. Other poems of note that I found to be very excellent was "I Went To See McCarthy", "Sunday In November" and "Late Indian Summer."
Kleinzahler to me gained traction as I read him more. Should I have gone back to the beginning and try to see the light. Well I did, it didn't work. So 2/3 of the book has meaning the other 1/3 leaves me scratching my head. Really 3 ½ stars but I'll rate it 4 stars. Kleinzahler is gifted and I will read more of his works in the future.

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Isaac Mosquito

Read Kleinzahler's Jazzy Side Steps

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 10, 2020

Kleinzahler's lines read like a boxer's footwork, practiced but improvised, as needed. His poetic subjects vary to include poems on culture from different historical periods, geography, travel, drugs, baseball, with a band of misfit characters. He'll write about Stoltz the talking dog as easily as he'll discuss falling peach blossoms. There are hundreds of luscious and bawdy images in this book. My favorite is when Kleinzahler will go full neoclassical (sorta) and offer us his brand of traditional Chinese poetry, gnarled with genuine American scenery. His is a masterful eye that goes toe-to-toe with the best figurative writing. Intoxicating and indispensable if you dig contemporary and cosmopolitan poetry.

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Mark Cannon

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 29, 2008

If you love poetry, get this book. Kleinzahler is the real deal. If you are tired of the slam poetry culture or the "Everyone is an artist" aspect of American pop culture, you will love Kleinzahler. He has the essential quality of all good poets: he is in love with words, drunk with them. If you are tired of the poetry slam "Everyone is an artist" mediocrity of so much American culture today, you will love Kleinzahler.
This is poetry to be relished, read aloud, read to people you love. Such a joy to read him. Believe it or not, there are poets who have an ear, understand how words can sing, and actually can count syllables, can rhyme, and have read poetry that is more than 10 years old.

12 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Graham Mummery

Technicolour on the Hoof

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 21, 2012

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When asked, it can be difficult for poets to answer a simple question as to what type of poet they are. Often on writes a poem and then then next may be very different in style, content and form. This in many ways applies to August Kleinzahler, because one of the things that is common in his poetry is travel.

Many poems here reflect places, some of them specific like Land's End, or Berlin, or his native San Francisco. There is also sense of a wandering soul. In one poem he suggests people go into a bar to watch sport. In another, he writes about waking up in a room and not knowing where one is. In yet another he describes a friend travelling in on a plane, drinking a glass of wine, who will arrive to go to a concert.

However, Kleinzahler's poems also show a sense of culture. There are poems dedicated to memories of other poets, or homages to poets such as Catullus. Poems about art, food as well as films and a sequence about the history of western music, mixed in with detail about city streets.

It's a wide range of subjects together with some experimentation with language. The broad subject is contemporary cosmopolitan living of which Kleinzahler is a brilliant chronicler in verse, and in a language that is both contemporary and clear. Not all the poems to my mind succeed here. I personally prefer him in shorter doses such as in the books Green Sees Things in Waves or Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club (Faber Poetry) which perhaps allow more space to orientate oneself and hold together better as books.

That said there are many brilliant poems here. A selected poems by any poet is a good place to get orientate oneself around their work, and this volume will more than serve for that. Kleinzahler is an essential voice.

One person found this helpful

PP Prong

Waking Me Up

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 8, 2011

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This book had a good review in the literary press, which is why I bought it. Faber editions are also such wholesome, well edited, quality products. Kleinzahler is a poet I know a little from magazines but this full-fat selection provided an enjoyable overview of his formal range and textures spanning several UK published collections. Some poems connected instantly, others locked me out a little bit with their surrealism but remain interesting for their playfulness and linguistic ingenuity. His language is sometimes archaic or overtly clever, but often pared and crisp with a modern, urban sensibility. I found the collection instantly satisfying and re-readable. Some of his poems have already established themselves on my favourites list.

4 people found this helpful

Eleanor Fielding

Given as a gift to a poet friend - he ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 25, 2016

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Given as a gift to a poet friend - he loves it.

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