An isolate, protracted surrealism attaches to objects, animals, and emotion in Craig's semi-rural outlandish poems. Readers are embroiled in textural exposition, encountering dark recessions against a relief of interior truth: "Today you strike me as needing something./ So take my ten-thousand-pound typewriter ...For here is an older,/other world, taking almost forty sheep to make one sock."

Can You Relax in My House

Literature & Fiction

Craig, Michael Earl

United States

Fence Books

In his second book, Michael Earl Craig blurs the line between the documentary and imaginative impulses. The resulting poems mutilate pastoral myths—a man who has ignored horses his whole life but now wants to try touching one, or two gay donkeys and their uneventful lives on the high plains—but also pay tribute to the current-day West in which Craig lives.

Yes, Master (Free Choice)

"I like being in the world of Craig's poems. Anything can happen, and probably will, and it will affect me in small or large ways that I couldn't have imagined. The precision of their imagery keeps me reeling with delight."—James Tate
Thin Kimono continues Michael Earl Craig's singular breed of brilliant absurdist poetry, utterly and masterfully slanting the realities of daily existence.
Michael Earl Craig is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006) and Can You Relax in My House (Fence Books, 2002). He lives in Livingston, Montana, where he is a certified journeyman farrier.

Thin Kimono

Wave Books

Talkativeness is yet another uncanny whistling choir in a reflective and engaging world all Craig’s own.

Talkativeness (First Edition)

Poetry

"Reality may be stranger than fiction, but Michael Earl Craig's poems make a laudable effort to even the score. Quite possibly the funniest poet writing today, Craig's unadorned poetry tends toward the deadpan and the offbeat, with an almost David Lynch-like sense of the uncanny."—The Believer"I like being in the world of Michael Craig's poems. Anything can happen, and probably will, and it will affect me in small or large ways that I couldn't have imagined. The precision of their imagery keeps me reeling with delight."—James TateMichael Earl Craig furthers his existential, Lynchian leanings with masterfully composed new poems. He has borrowed the everyday and returned it defamiliarized, dark, and droll. Readers are ushered out of their contemporary bustle and into the intimate viewing room that is Craig's cinematic fourth collection.Wild for the LordSomeone is sitting on a tall stool before me.I have just very carefully cutmy best friend's wife's bangs.My watch feels like a small corpse on my wrist tonight.Michael Earl Craig is the author of Thin Kimono, Yes, Master, Can You Relax in My House, and the chapbook Jombang Jet. He lives in the Shields Valley, near Livingston, Montana.

With his fifth collection of poems, Michael Earl Craig delivers a fresh set of tableaux that have us squinting aslant at the ordinary. Dexterously constructed, the scenes, conversations, letters, instructions, stories, bios, and little fables of Woods and Clouds Interchangeable twist the comedic into shapes of startling seriousness, making us laugh at the same time they widen the dimensions of the world we live in.

Woods and Clouds Interchangeable (Wave Books)

Iggy Horse

In Michael Earl Craig's sixth book, poems resonate with an inscrutable logic that feels excitedly otherworldly and unsettlingly familiar. Whether he be writing about the cadaver that Hans Holbein the Younger used as a model, Montana as the "Italy of God," or the milking rituals in Kelly Reichardt's First Cow, Iggy Horse is a book that articulates the sadness and strangeness of American life with the poetic observations of true satire.

In Michael Earl Craig's sixth book, poems resonate with an inscrutable logic that feels excitedly otherworldly and unsettlingly familiar. Whether he be writing about the cadaver that Hans Holbein the Younger used as a model, Montana as the "Italy of God," or the milking rituals in Kelly Reichardt's&nbsp;First Cow,&nbsp;Iggy Horse&nbsp;is a book that articulates the sadness and strangeness of American life with the poetic observations of true satire.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Craig, Michael Earl. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Craig, Michael Earl

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Craig, Michael Earl. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Can You Relax in My House

Yes, Master (Free Choice)

Thin Kimono

Talkativeness (First Edition)

Talkativeness (First Edition)

Woods and Clouds Interchangeable (Wave Books)

Iggy Horse

Iggy Horse