Graham Foust, Necessary Stranger

Graham Foust’s third book offers agile poems of dread and humor. As Robert Creeley writes:

Curious one should think of the way that trickles of water would then find paths down the edge of the street after rain, the way one would squat for hours contriving diversions, little dams of twigs and pebbles, bits of stick, dirt, paper. Then float leaves on the current still persisting, watching the progress of them either end up in a cul de sac or else sail off in proverbial glory. I was supposed to be getting home after school, but this was far more interesting.

Graham Foust’s poems are “far more interesting” and find their way through like impedances, moved on by just such currents. Think of the myriad “rhetorics” that overlay our speaking. “Hey there!” “Sir?” And so on, not to mention all the frames and habits, which (that!) make saying anything (something? some thing?) so freighted. There is also the pace as in W.C. Williams’s “The old horse dies slow…,” if you know that poem. These poems move in close to luxuriant circles, round and round each particular syllable, neither hurrying nor dragging behind—just there. At times there seems an almost physical presence to them, a third dimension, which is substance.

There are years between us but we meet nonetheless in these places, thinking (“I think / think think once / in a while”)—thinking. In fact, he’s the first person who ever moved me to look up the etymology of that word think: “tong-. To think, feel . . . Old English thancian, to thank . . .” Anyhow, methinks I owe this poet thanks for fact of us both finding wit in stone and much else. He feels, therefore he knows.

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ISBN 0-9787467-1-6
Price: $12.95