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Looking for an Eye
Peter Krok
By Alyce Wilson
In Looking for an Eye, Philadelphia poet Peter Krok illuminates
the beauty of small moments. He turns his gaze, not to grand landscapes,
but to the world around him, elevating it.
In "My City," a poem that could serve as his ars poetica,
Krok depicts a dirty, depressing city: "you squat on ribs of steel
and stone / that stretch across the stark horizon / like muscled fiber
to a carapace / that crawls across the decades." Yet even here,
the speaker finds beauty: "Honeysuckle too / sweetens evening air,
the scent of summer." The speaker seeks to convert what he sees
into something meaningful, yearning for healing: "Pins must be
/ set into your joints. A new cast splinted / on your broken bones,
for your shell / cracks, hardens, splits, must be set anew."
In the poem "The Windows," Krok addresses the grief America
felt after 9/11, coupled with the instinct to try to make things right.
After watching the devastation on TV, the speaker's wife begins to clean
the windows, wiping until they are bright. The poem concludes: "So
much had changed. We just touched the surface."
Sometimes the simple truth of a moment can be devastating. In "Explanations,"
the speaker contemplates all the questions children ask but how little
of the world they yet understand. "How do you explain a kiss, /
the daydreamer gazing out his window / or that stranger in your looking-glass?"
In its final lines, the poem encompasses mortality itself:
The hours fall in the hourglass,
And in the dark the whippoorwill echoes
The sound that pauses in your breath.
It will not last ... will not last...
will not last... will ... last...
The simplicity of Krok's poems belies his deft use of poetic techniques,
such as the repetition of the round "O" sounds in "Athens,
Ohio," a poem about lost love, or his use of slant rhyme and alliteration
in "The Bocce Players," which feels like a moving painting.
"Loss," a poem about a stranded glove, is exquisite in its
simplicity, comparable to a poem by the ancient Japanese poet Basho.
By turning his eye to the minute details of daily life, Krok opens
the reader's mind to universal concerns. Through small observations,
he reaches great truths.
Rating: **** (Must Read)
FootHills Publishing, 2008: ISBN 0-941053-54-7
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