Sea Smoke

About this book

Louis Jenkins capturesnails down really!whole moments in time and space completely decorated with all the essential textual things needed to make them vibrate and shudder with life.Clarence Major Several of these poems are included in the performance script of NICE FISH the play. The 60 new prose poems in Sea Smoke continue Louis Jenkins imaginative glimpses of scenes from contemporary life. Many of these pieces begin with the ordinary but a subtle pivot in language propels the reader into an unexpected and oftentimes humorous perspective from which to view the world anew. Herein the blue moon is unhappy as it gazes into car windows clouds sweep across the horizon as if serving Genghis Khan and the poet considers the benefits of retirement: Retirement Ive been thinking of retiring of selling the poetry business and enjoying my twilight years. Its a prose poem business so its a niche market. Still after thirty some years I must have assets worth well in excess of $300. Perhaps the new owner of the business will want to diversify go into novels or plays or perhaps merge into a school or movement. It wont matter to me once Ive retired. Maybe Ill do a little traveling winter in the Southwest. Take up golf. Spend more time with the family. Maybe Ill just walk around and look at things with absolutely no compulsion to say anything at all about them. Louis Jenkins lives in Duluth Minnesota. His poems have been published in a number of literary magazines and anthologies. His books of poetry include An Almost Human Gesture (Eighties Press and Ally Press 1987) All Tangled Up With the Living (Nineties Press 1991) Nice Fish: New & Selected Prose Poems (Holy Cow! Press 1995) Just Above Water (Holy Cow! Press 1997) and The Winter Road (Holy Cow! Press 2000). Some of his prose poems were published in The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner) and in Great American Prose Poems (Scribner 2003).