Vagrants & Accidentals

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

Part One

1. Vagrants

2. Borders without Doctors

3. The Descent

4. Carousel

5. The Changeling

6. Among the Cypresses (23 Remedies)

7. After Caravaggio

8. Carbon Copy

9. Utilitarianism

10. Cycladic Head

11. Les Calanques

12. The Weir

13. Wilson's Warbler

Part Two

1. Matinee

2. Untitled #10

3. Parents

4. The Beardsley Limner

5. Small Government

6. Flash Drive

7. For the Climbers

8. Skunk Cabbage

9. Not Waving but Growling

10. God: A Study

11. On a Friday

12. Finesse

Part Three

1. Transparency

2. Linear A

3. Persona Non Grata

4. On Turning 38 in Rome

5. New Volunteer at the Art Museum

6. Nisqually Delta

7. Lignum Vitae

8. Linear B

9. Carmen Saeculare

10. Parakeets in Rome

11. The Quagmire

12. Bivalve Lullaby

13. Low Hanging Fruit

Part Four

1. Old Paradox

2. Accidentals

3. Entanglement (Sombrero)

4. Core Sample

5. Therefore Wander

6. Entanglement (Satellite)

7. Pigeon Guillemots

8. The Break

9. House Finch in Bird Bath

10. An Illustrated Guide to Feathers

11. Hard Return

12. The Undertow

13. One Atmosphere