The winning volume in the 1994 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Living in the Resurrection by T. Crunk. As James Dickey, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, says in the foreword, Here is that rare phenomenon, a writer of instinctive formal vision. His real reverence for the simple objects of the everyday world, their ability to present cup, tree, and hand both as they seem and as they are with a kind of mystical iconic starkness, is a quality uniquely Mr. Crunk's. That this starkness eventually begins to warp into the surreal and ultimately windows into the Luminous Beyond, is additional sanction for gratitude.
Reliquaria
1. Found Hand-Painted on a Tin Flue Cover
Ribbon of black crape
draped on a door knob
like broken strings
hanging from a loom
with the words: Weep not.
What do I need of this world?
2. S. P. Dinsmoor Describes His Tomb
I have made myself a coffin with a glass lid.
By the door of my grave house
I have set a cement angel and a stone jug.
When I see the host coming down, the lid will--fly open
and I will sail out into the air like a locust.
If I am called above, the angel will help me--on my way.
If I have to go below, I will grab my jug
and fill it with water somewhere on the road down.
Meantime, every day I pray--O Lord
teach me that I am but earth,
a hollow vessel of clay,
only a wisp of thy breath against my emptiness.
3.
They have yet to figure out
the name of the church
two men diving in Barkley Lake
around Cain's Mill a few years ago
found the whole steeple of
cross and all
half-buried in the mud shallows.
About the Author: T. Crunk was born and raised in western Kentucky. He has received master's degrees in philosophy from the University of Kentucky and in English and creative writing from the University of Virginia. Crunk's poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Paris Review, Poetry Northwest, Quarterly West and The Virginia Quarterly Review.
