"The Wide World"
from Steve Kronen's
Splendor

Steve Kronen:

Steve Kronen is the author of a previous book of poems, Empirical Evidence (University of Georgia Press, 1992). His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, The Georgia Review, The Paris Review, The Threepenny Review, The American Scholar, The Drunken Boat, and other magazines. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, two grants from the Florida Arts Council, and the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is a librarian in Winter Park, Florida, where he lives with his wife, novelist Ivonne Lamazares, and their daughter, Sophie. (Photo by Sophie Kronen)

About Splendor:

"Steve Kronen's Splendor represents the mature work of a poet doubly gifted. There is the technical polish of the collection, demonstrating Kronen can write whatever his subjects require. And there is something rarer, a sentient sympathy that enables Kronen access to a wide range of things — relatives, seasons, zoological gardens, fellow writers, even Miss Havisham. As page after page makes clear, this is a fully conceived, highly accomplished book that demonstrates the impressive range of a powerful talent."
— Wyatt Prunty

"Steve Kronen's life as loving husband and father is lived, in Splendor, against the backdrop of history, literature, and even eternity. He repeatedly surprises the reader, not with the cheap tricks of a writer who is only interested in surprise, but with the insights of someone who has thought his way past cleverness and other glittering falsenesses to wisdom itself, even if it is a provisional wisdom. Splendor is a splendid achievement."
— Andrew Hudgins

"Steve Kronen's word wizardry not only provides a feast of formal patterns, but his poems are filled with passion and wit. He celebrates Thoreau in terza rima, mourns our PermaWar in a villanelle: 'They'll burn my crops and hoard my oil,' and invents a delicious fantasy of Marianne Moore Late at Night '... rifling the drawers/ of the rich executives...' in Manhattan, then flying home to Brooklyn. There are 'dolorous and shamed Rockettes of the porch,' in Rocking Chairs from the Thirties, and poignant Our Home Movies, contrasting the films of childhood birthdays with the film clips that captured the Kennedy assassination in Dallas. Read Splendor and weep, but rejoice in this long overdue, well-crafted book."
— Maxine Kumin

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