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Sleeping It Off in Rapid City: Poems, New and Selected Paperback – March 31, 2009

by August Kleinzahler (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 19 ratings
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The first broad retrospective of August Kleinzahler's career, Sleeping It Ofƒ in Rapid Citygathers poems from his major works along with a rich portion of new poems that visit different voice registers, experiment with form and length, and confirm Kleinzahler as among the most inventive and brilliant poets of our time. Travel―actual and imaginary―remains a passion and inspiration, and in these pages the poet also finds "This sanctified ground / Here, yes, here / The dead solid center of the universe / At the heartof the heart of America."
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  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  4. Publication date
    March 31, 2009
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.57 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0374531730
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0374531737
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Offbeat, off hand, subtle, and unsettling . . . Longer acquaintance with Kleinzahler's verse brings greater admiration.” ―The Voice Literary Supplement

About the Author

August Kleinzahler published his first book of poetry, A Calendar of Airs, in 1978. In 2003, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, which won the 2004 Griffin International Poetry Prize. His collection of poetry, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City, won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of the prose books Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained (FSG, 2004) and Music: I-LXXIV (Pressed Wafer, 2009), and the winner of the 2008 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and the 2017 American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award. A native of Fort Lee, New Jersey, Kleinzahler currently lives in San Francisco.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition (March 31, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374531730
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374531737
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.57 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 19 ratings

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August Kleinzahler

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4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
19 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Mary W. Walters
5.0 out of 5 stars Kleinzahler Writes Fine Poems
Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2008
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I discovered August Kleinzahler when I became intrigued by an article based on an interview with him in the New York Times a couple of years ago, and then read a poem on-line that made me draw in my breath because he'd described an experience so precisely that I recognized everything about it. I immediately ordered Green Sees Things In Waves, a book that pleased me no end, and now I have ordered and received Sleeping It Off in Rapid City--a beautiful book physically, and one which is also a volume of truly excellent poems. Some of my favourites so far (I'm just finishing Section I) are "Shoot The Freak" and "A Valentine: Regarding the Impracticability of Our Love." In addition to his magical way with words and images, I love the way Kleinzahler keeps the quotidian with him when he writes: it is everywhere in his poems, not crushing his work, but rather informing it. Or, to be more precise, it is as though he brings popular culture and day-to-day events up against larger issues, thereby revealing everything in a new way.

Take the genius of "I went to see McCarthy," in which the narrator lifts off by plane from a sere mid-west America to revisit "old arguments" in Ireland. He leaves behind "a parched bare land of yellow ochre" and enters Ireland ("swaddled in cloud, all grey and green"). The poem reveals McCarthy's town and his country in the way one might buff a brass image--going over the same area until its shape is gradually made bare and deeply shining. Through echoed images and repeated phrases, still trailing bits of the flat and dry Midwest behind us, we gradually enter the green land, its past and its way of telling stories--gradually enter until we are totally immersed in green. In green and green--learning as we go about the heroic battles that are required to come up with a good pat of Skibbereen butter, and that if something sounds good when you say it once, you might as well say it twice.

So I will: Kleinzahler writes fine poems.
22 people found this helpful
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Really a Reader
4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Voice here and there
Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2014
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I would like to say that there is something fresh and new in these poems. For the most part they are nicely tuned pieces that can possess a startling and unexpected image here and there that brings you out of the expectaions in the modernist voice. Billy Collins offers a more authentic sensibility and Charles Simic has a better ear. Kleinzahler should be read. Some of his evocations of nature. Specifically color in nature are arresting.
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Isaac Mosquito
5.0 out of 5 stars Read Kleinzahler's Jazzy Side Steps
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2020
Kleinzahler's lines read like a boxer's footwork, practiced but improvised, as needed. His poetic subjects vary to include poems on culture from different historical periods, geography, travel, drugs, baseball, with a band of misfit characters. He'll write about Stoltz the talking dog as easily as he'll discuss falling peach blossoms. There are hundreds of luscious and bawdy images in this book. My favorite is when Kleinzahler will go full neoclassical (sorta) and offer us his brand of traditional Chinese poetry, gnarled with genuine American scenery. His is a masterful eye that goes toe-to-toe with the best figurative writing. Intoxicating and indispensable if you dig contemporary and cosmopolitan poetry.
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Mark Cannon
5.0 out of 5 stars Mark Cannon
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2008
If you love poetry, get this book. Kleinzahler is the real deal. If you are tired of the slam poetry culture or the "Everyone is an artist" aspect of American pop culture, you will love Kleinzahler. He has the essential quality of all good poets: he is in love with words, drunk with them. If you are tired of the poetry slam "Everyone is an artist" mediocrity of so much American culture today, you will love Kleinzahler.
This is poetry to be relished, read aloud, read to people you love. Such a joy to read him. Believe it or not, there are poets who have an ear, understand how words can sing, and actually can count syllables, can rhyme, and have read poetry that is more than 10 years old.
12 people found this helpful
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Richard C. Geschke
4.0 out of 5 stars And Reading Further, the Light Went On
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2013
As I read through August Kleinzahler's poems, I was somewhat startled at his interweaving of everyday events along with his at times irreverence and language. Use of common curse words and some sexual innuendo permeates through some of his poems. Also many of his poems left me scratching my head and to its meanings. Many of his works have a definite cadence and rhythm in which as a reader you feel comfortable with, but in the end I found myself looking for any kind of recognition or meaning.
At times I was ready to stop going further, but as I continued to read I found the second half of Kleinzahler's collection to be very riveting indeed. For instance I started to notice that the author was serializing his poems with the same title as if he was Heinrich Heine writing "Germany. A Winter Tale" in Caputs. Only Klenzahler scatters his Caputs in between other poems. Kleinzahler's poem titles throughout this collection of poems are "A History of Western Music" and his collection of numbered "Epistles."
I began to see the cadence and rhythm of the author, along with some of his humor in common everyday language and context. Other poems of note that I found to be very excellent was "I Went To See McCarthy", "Sunday In November" and "Late Indian Summer."
Kleinzahler to me gained traction as I read him more. Should I have gone back to the beginning and try to see the light. Well I did, it didn't work. So 2/3 of the book has meaning the other 1/3 leaves me scratching my head. Really 3 ½ stars but I'll rate it 4 stars. Kleinzahler is gifted and I will read more of his works in the future.
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Top reviews from other countries

Eleanor Fielding
5.0 out of 5 stars Given as a gift to a poet friend - he ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2016
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Given as a gift to a poet friend - he loves it.
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Graham Mummery
4.0 out of 5 stars Technicolour on the Hoof
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 21, 2012
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When asked, it can be difficult for poets to answer a simple question as to what type of poet they are. Often on writes a poem and then then next may be very different in style, content and form. This in many ways applies to August Kleinzahler, because one of the things that is common in his poetry is travel.

Many poems here reflect places, some of them specific like Land's End, or Berlin, or his native San Francisco. There is also sense of a wandering soul. In one poem he suggests people go into a bar to watch sport. In another, he writes about waking up in a room and not knowing where one is. In yet another he describes a friend travelling in on a plane, drinking a glass of wine, who will arrive to go to a concert.

However, Kleinzahler's poems also show a sense of culture. There are poems dedicated to memories of other poets, or homages to poets such as Catullus. Poems about art, food as well as films and a sequence about the history of western music, mixed in with detail about city streets.

It's a wide range of subjects together with some experimentation with language. The broad subject is contemporary cosmopolitan living of which Kleinzahler is a brilliant chronicler in verse, and in a language that is both contemporary and clear. Not all the poems to my mind succeed here. I personally prefer him in shorter doses such as in the books  Green Sees Things in Waves  or  Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club (Faber Poetry)  which perhaps allow more space to orientate oneself and hold together better as books.

That said there are many brilliant poems here. A selected poems by any poet is a good place to get orientate oneself around their work, and this volume will more than serve for that. Kleinzahler is an essential voice.
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PP Prong
4.0 out of 5 stars Waking Me Up
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 8, 2011
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This book had a good review in the literary press, which is why I bought it. Faber editions are also such wholesome, well edited, quality products. Kleinzahler is a poet I know a little from magazines but this full-fat selection provided an enjoyable overview of his formal range and textures spanning several UK published collections. Some poems connected instantly, others locked me out a little bit with their surrealism but remain interesting for their playfulness and linguistic ingenuity. His language is sometimes archaic or overtly clever, but often pared and crisp with a modern, urban sensibility. I found the collection instantly satisfying and re-readable. Some of his poems have already established themselves on my favourites list.
4 people found this helpful
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