The News as Usual showcases the work of a gifted poet who employs language at its richest. Yenser captures lyrics and blues, ballads and villanelles, and even a crown of sonnets. Sonically rich and filled with detail, these poems link mortality with fishing, nature with protoplasm--constantly finding ways to explore the inner and outer worlds in ways at once understated and wise.
Jon Kelly Yenser is also the author of two chapbooks, Walter's Yard and The Disambiguation of Katydids, and the poetry collection The News as Usual: Poems (UNM Press).
"In The News as Usual, Kelly Yenser has achieved a De Rerum Natura of the Great Plains through his attention to the unexpected beauty of small things and the heartbreak of loss and love."--Mary Clearman Blew, author of Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin: A Novel
"The poems are musical, tactile, beautifully built. Yenser's poems are themselves 'a maze / of immeasure, a wild / scoring.'"--Rebecca Aronson, author of Ghost Child of the Atalanta Bloom
"With grace, precision, and humor, Kelly Yenser captures the seasons of Kansas in a small town. Summer twilight, baseball, the beloved dogs--glimpses of the news as usual that gather into the seasons of a lifetime. Spoon River Anthology, Winesburg, Ohio--Yenser leaves them in the dust."--Murray Moulding, author of Moon Over Easy
Part I Invocation to Lucretius Railing against People Railing against Kansas The State Bird Lunch at the Flint Hills Diner The Salesman Fishing on the Ninnescah Current Events The Disambiguation of Katydids Revisiting the Weather Broadcast Shagging Flies Making Peace When I Got Back Lucretius Applied on the Plains
Part II Spring Fever Blues The Abundant Shame of Spring, the Forsythia Early Work At 4:48 We Lose Two Dogs There's a Dog Loose The Elysian Fields Apartments Great Horned Owl Walter Fails Walter and I Play Clue Another Owl in the Neighborhood Fall Leaves Blues Cleaning Up in October An Elegy ahead of Time Early Snow
Part III Transition Running Dog Blues Dream of Departure Departing LAX Anticipating Retirement, I Explore Guatemala Last Hours in Antigua City Window Shopping in a Fever Reviewing the Troops in the Ruins
Part IV Note to Self Finishing Touch Fishing the St. Joe The Hour for Walking Dogs Afterword