Vagrants & Accidentals, the second full-length collection from poet
Kevin Craft, is part vade mecum, part songbook, whose taut lines and
adaptable stanzas traffic in the personal effects of emigration and
estrangement, exile and return. In ornithology, a vagrant or accidental
is a bird that appears out of its natural or normal range, blown off
course by a storm, or inadvertently introduced into a new environment by
human trade. Likewise, Craft is interested in things taken out of
context--Greek myths in the Pacific Northwest, the potsherd or megalith
stranded in a museum, excess carbon in the atmosphere, American pop
songs in a Roman piazza, adoptions, estrangements, dangerous migrations,
the constant shuffle of human beings from place to place--asking how we
reorient ourselves in the crossfire of constant, rapid, global
transformation.
Organized into four parts, the collection moves from the deeply personal
to more global issues of interconnectedness. In language intensely
lyrical, grounded in prehistory and science, Craft evokes questions of
family and belonging that underscore a lifetime, gradually revealing the
forces that shape us from the deepest reaches of time and place. As some
birds sing to define their territory, so his poetry calls between the
raggedness of daily life and our deeper yearning for coherence.
Listen to an interview with and readings by the author via KUOW: http:
//kuow.org/post/what-i-learned-my-feminist-mom
