Louis Jenkins

     I really enjoyed reading some of Louis Jenkins's work. I haven't ever read much prose before, but I find that I like the style a lot. I especially like the way the tone and format make it sound like a snippet of a paragraph out of a short story. It has lots of descriptive, poetic lines in it, but it reads like someone telling a story. I think Jenkins's uses this aspects of prose very well. For example, in the poem from "Nice Fish", it starts with the premise of two men sitting down to ice fish. One of the men starts talking, and if you didn't know it was poetry that he was reciting, you'd think that it was just a guy rambling to his buddy while they got ready to fish. In one section of that poem, Jenkins writes, "She talked about the problems of coffee growers from Central America. I listened, but I also thought about kissing her on her neck, just behind her ear where her blonde hair curled." Nothing is particularly profound or deep about this line; the way this character talks about this girl absentmindedly while his friend struggles to set up the tent is almost comical. And yet, the simplicity in the way this line and the way it is recited makes it so heartfelt and easy to relate to. I also really liked the poem Change. I really liked the line, "Dinosaurs did not disappear from the earth but evolved into birds and crock pots became bread makers." There is a playful, humorous aspect to this line and to the overall poem, but the last line is a very "kerchunk" moment: "But essentially you are the same as ever, constant in your instability.
     Reading Jenkins's work has opened me up to the potential of prose. It was very poetic lines and phrases and focuses very much on the meaning of each sentence, which allows the poet to drift more from the structure of lines and focus on the meaning and sound of phrases, which I really like. It reminds me of Garrison Keillor on A Prairie Home Companion and his tales from Lake Woebegone. The gentle carrying on of his voice as he tells a story is reflected in Jenkins's poetry. I feel like prose is the art of story telling but only with snapshots, mixing story telling with the "language condensed" aspect of poetry.