Michael Kriesel's The Light of Fields

Michael Kriesel’s mini chapbook, The Light of Fields, courtesy of the Pocket Protector Series by Alternating Current is a mere $3.00 at Propaganda Press. I think it is interesting to note that this collection is a reprint originally published by Jump River Press, Inc. in 1982 when this author was 20 years old. What would you say to re-printing something you wrote 20 years ago? I think it would be an enlightening experience as to how you’ve changed as a writer since. This collection exposes fresh experiences of love and life throughout the pages and there are several poems I enjoyed in this collection and as always I will share them with you below:


Breaking Silences

For days
I have watched each cloud in the river
broken into speech against the rocks

I will break many silences
to tell you this.


Personally, I love the imagery of “each cloud in the river/broken into speech against the rocks” because it is unusual and imaginative. I also wonder what kind of silences are broken in the last stanza, an awkward first meeting or simply an interruption of quietness together?



Walking From Funerals

Unconsoled I see the light of fields

the bursting red dyings of leaves
clutch my hair and my feet
with the hands of small children

Unmoved I continue

although I have hands like their own
and veins swell as theirs do

Look back
and the fires are stars

We are not ours
but those we cannot hold

I am a universe alone


I like the way Mr. Kriesel uses leaves as comparisons to hands clutching him despite his feeling so alone after loss, the idea of anyone clutching him being unable to comfort him.




The Lean Tree

To wake
to snow’s still soul

easing the bent stems
from memory

Rising
to still limbs of pine
become white as the eyes of the blind

I trust to the green underneath

and abandon my tracks
to the snow.


If it were still winter, I would recommend reading this poem and comparing it to your own surroundings. It’s a beautiful poem in which you can feel the silence and picture the beauty of the landscape knowing that there is the promise of color and spring to come.



If you enjoyed this short sample please visit The Propaganda Press Catalog to snap up a copy of your own and remember that with any purchase through the catalog a bonus book is included from archives. Not only will you be supporting the small press but the poet as well since poets can set royalties through Alternating Current and I am always an advocate of poets getting paid for their work.

Thanks always for reading, please check in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…