Biblia Pauperum

Poetry October 2013 ISBN 978-1-936628-21-6 94 pages Softcover, 6" x 9"

"I've been a huge fan of T. Crunk's poetry since his marvelous, Yale-winning debut, Living in the Resurrection. The poems in that volume and from the nearly two decades since its appearance have always seemed to me essential, life-giving, full of delights all too rare these days, and wisdom, yes,
real wisdom. If the poems in this new volume are leaner, hungrier, more restless and questing, than any we've seen from him before, they've lost none of the vitality, the sense of having grappled with the ineffable and emerged from unknowable, echoing depths, that Crunk's work always possesses. There are poems here ('Crows,' 'Ants,' the long 'Purgatory (Studies)') that are as good as any I know of being written today. T. Crunk is one of my very favorite contemporary poets" —Davis McCombs

From the Book

Eschatology

Everything had at last

been remembered except

the one name spelled out

in chimney smoke along a ridge

where a man walking

in silhouette is a wound

moving across the sky

and an oak is testing

its wings of leaves

a hand of dust

swirls up into the air

a soul calls after the wind

and back— O what

has gone and left us here?

What Others Say

I've been a huge fan of T. Crunk's poetry since his marvelous, Yale-winning debut, Living in the Resurrection. The poems in that volume and from the nearly two decades since its appearance have always seemed to me essential, life-giving, full of delights all too rare these days, and wisdom, yes, real wisdom. If the poems in this new volume are leaner, hungrier, more restless and questing, than any we've seen from him before, they've lost none of the vitality, the sense of having grappled with the ineffable and emerged from unknowable, echoing depths, that Crunk's work always possesses. There are poems here ("Crows," "Ants," the long "Purgatory (Studies)") that are as good as any I know of being written today. T. Crunk is one of my very favorite contemporary poets.

— Davis McCombs

Crunk seems to me a true voyant, rather than a pseudo-mystic, as so many other current poets are. His poems convey a very real sense of the sacramental; one feels most fortunate to follow him through his lines, just as he goes along, uttering strange religious cries.

— James Dickey

Living in the Resurrection is filled with lustrous and portentous moments. In poem after sharply focused poem, in which the writing emphasizes meticulous attention to detail and offers some really breath-taking imagery, … there coexists a tone of reverence along with a sense of argument—an atmosphere of spiritual inquiry as well as fierce attachment …. [The book is] illuminated and illuminating ….

— Mary Oliver

In Parables and Revelations … the moon writes suicide notes, ants prophesy, and mirrors and windows come face to face. Each poem directs our gaze toward the clues that shroud life's most profound mysteries. They are signposts for the journey we are all on, whether we realize it or not.

— Chempolil Mathew

About the Author

T. Crunk

Tony Crunk is a native of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. His first collection of poetry, Living in the Resurrection, was the 1994 selection in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. He has published several subsequent collections, including Biblia Pauperum (Accents Publishing), as well as a number of works in other genres, including fiction, drama, and children's books. He lives in St. Louis.