How could Ken Bruen not be in The Lineup?

Here ’tis, the latest stop on the So Dark for April blog tour in support of the fourth issue of The Lineup, a collection of “poems on crime.”  The collection is edited by  Gerald So with Reed Farrel Coleman, Sarah Cortez and R. Narvaez, and features poems by Ken Bruen, Michael Casey, Reed Farrel Coleman, David Corbett, Mary Agnes Dalrymple, Mary Christine Delea, Jeanne Dickey, H. Palmer Hall, Paul Hostovsky, David Jordan, Laura LeHew, Thomas Michael McDade, Peter Meinke, Keith Rawson, Chad Rohrbacher, Stephen Jay Schwartz, Nancy Scott, Kieran Shea, J.D. Smith, J.J. Steinfeld, John Stickney, Caitlin Elizabeth Thomson, Randall Watson, Charles Harper Webb, Steve Weddle, Germaine Welch.

Want to know why I’m writing about The Lineup instead of appearing in The Lineup? Reed Farrel Coleman hits it on the head in his introduction to the great new fourth issue of the collection, subtitled, as always “Poems on Crime”: “You cannot read what follows and be left untouched or uninformed by how this group of poets has chosen to walk the mean streets and look around the dark corners so that the rest of us might understand.”

Oh, sure, in my burgeoning little “career” as a crime fiction writer, I have assayed those “mean streets,” purpled some prose over those “dark corners.” I might even have done so with what some would call a sharp turn of phrase. As I perused this new issue of The Lineup, almost embarrassed that I had bothered to send in my own tepid verse for consideration, I tried to discern what it was exactly that set this work apart from my own. My problem, as you’ll soon figure out if you haven’t already, is that I seem to need several words to get my point across. What the best poetry does is to slay you with a line, a word, a syllable. The best selections in this issue, as in the previous three, offer a gutpunch of realization in a moment captured.

Like Coleman’s “Slider, Part 7,” where, with the six words “the dirt/ more bullets/ more bodies,” he succinctly sums up the devastation of war atrocities.

Like Keith Rawson’s “A Story to Tell Our Daughter,” where he essentially tells that story in three lines: “She kept her daddy’s revolver cocked/ in between her thighs as she guided/ my right hand to her distended belly.”

Like Steve Weddle, who, in his poem “The Balance Lost,” offers a description – “Blood spreads, pools, shimmers,/ Like taillights in the rain” – that you might find in any number of crime fiction stories, but which here is the story, the culmination of a powerful clutch of lines that set the scene.

Like Ken Bruen, who… well, come on, this is Ken Bruen we’re talking about. Is there a writer with more references to “poetic” writing in his press clippings than Bruen who doesn’t have a published collection to his name? Everything he writes feels like poetry, because his prose is spare, razor sharp. Not a word is wasted, entire events are rendered in a line or two. It’s an oft-copied style, but one that, without the power of his words behind it

simply
rings
false.

His poem here, “Funeral: Of the Wino,” was drawn from The Hackman Blues, a poem that it both of a piece with the book and able to stand alone. It is among several poems that have appeared in his early fiction. If there’s any doubt that the man knows poetry as well as poetic prose, have a look.

Seeking wisdom, I turned to the man himself, who was kind enough to share his trademark brief responses to my wordier questions. Look no further than that ratio of question length to answer length to understand why Bruen is in the book, and I’m just writing about it.

TIRBD: Your prose already is very poetic. When you’re writing, do you made a conscious choice about whether something is poetry or prose, or do you follow your muse and then sort it out later?

KB: Write it as I sense it, then hope like hell I can make it sing.

What can poetry do that prose can’t, and vice versa?

KB: Truly move the stone heart

You sprinkled your early novels with poems, but told Ray Banks in an interview that a collection of your poetry will never appear. Why?

KB: Too many Irish poets. Did a pamphlet with Reed, Pete Speigelman for Bouchercon in Madison and loved doing it.

What are your thoughts about a collection of poetry on crime?

KB: Brilliant idea. Wish to fook I’d thought of it.

What poets do you admire and why? (Ed note: I’d like to think Ken was talking about poetic in the larger sense with this response, which lists blogs and novelists instead of poets).

Yours
Jen’s Book Thoughts
Murderati
The Rap Sheet
Crime Always Pays
Gerard So
Bill Crider
Ali Karim
Jason Starr new one

Because they are like a jolt to the soul, love ‘em.