Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #420912 in Books
• Published on: 1996-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 140 pages

Amazon.com Review
Adrienne Rich has called Hayden Carruth "a part of our country's poetic treasure," and his other admirers include Galway Kinnell and Wendell Berry. A poet's poet, Carruth spins simple lines full of possible meanings, lines that stick in the reader's mind a long time. In "Particularity," for instance, Carruth writes of "this invisible / hereness where I am . . . the center / of mystery." Juxtaposing the mysterious with the tangible, Carruth is writing better than ever.

From Publishers Weekly
Carruth's latest collection revolves around a handful of familiar themes, all of which mingle and reconfigure throughout the poet's bittersweet, sometimes celebratory, occasionally rueful verse. Meditations on aging and love, nostalgia and guilt, contemporary politics and ancient history filter through much of this generally moving, uneven collection. Carruth's voice, always highly personal, is at its best when it mixes colloquial diction with an elegiac lyricism, as in his meditation on family history, "Flying into St. Louis": "For sixty-five years/ I've blamed my mother and father,/ I've climbed their trees and lopped off/ their branches, I've held/ their words in my mind like cudgels." At other times, however, the colloquial takes over and Carruth's verse becomes almost flat, as in "The Chain": "but I am a poet and you are too and so are all people/ except the monsters of this world/ out there planting/ mines in the mud and snow...." Despite its lesser offerings, the collection amply illustrates the openness and honesty with which Carruth addresses the world, the mixed compassion and outrage with which he responds to it and his continued productivity through a long, distinguished career.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Although Carruth here declares "Truth and Beauty/ were never the/ aims of proper poetry," there's plenty of both in this affecting volume. "When we say I/ miss you/ what we mean is "I'm/ filled with/ dread"; "Was it the way of your world, too, old master, that everyone had to be/ a villain in someone else's life?"; "This is the summer of war in Bosnia./ A few summers ago the war was somewhere else." Carruth drops such aphoristic insights with ease, and they hit like gentle little blows alerting us to what is at the heart of our experience. Every line is perfectly polished?not "crafted," which seems far too deliberate and forced a word for this easy-flowing poetry, but smoothed as if the words had been rolled around and around the tongue like good whiskey (and maybe even scrambled eggs). These poems, all written since the publication of Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 (LJ 4/1/92), which won the National Book Award, demonstrate that Carruth is still at the top of his form. Recommended for all poetry collections.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Carruth's poems penetrate deep beneath the surface
Do yourself a favor and pick up SCRAMBLED EGGS & WHISKEY -- and follow Hayden Carruth on a journey that masterfully and humbly moves from the most troubling, trying scenes from life to the most redeeming to the everyday and a whole, whole lot in between. Rhythmic, with obvious jazz sensibilities -- and with so much truth -- these poems get to the heart of the matter in ways that make you nod in agreement, laugh out loud or pause in grieving silence or certain solidarity. I am glad this is the book that introduced me to the huge body of Mr. Carruth's work.

Poems with great range
From the title of Carruth's Collection, Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, the reader expects a Bukowskiesque collection of poems, but in actuality Carruth's work has great dexterity and range of emotion, is quite supple in its expressive quality, and has the capacity to do a lot of heavy, emotional lifting in a confined space. In this collection, three major themes are explored: Carruth's coming death, his marriage to a much younger woman, (and her fate after he is gone) and the cancer of his adult daughter. Carruth weaves these themes and others into a series of poems which, although outwardly simple in terms of language and style, really penetrate the mysteries of life and death. Of course, death is the main character here, but Carruth is rounded enough in his view to see redemption everywhere, especially in death's nemesis, love.

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey
I liked less than half of the poems, but the poems that I liked were very good. I am glad that I have the book. I will try another book by him.