Sufficiency of the Actual (Illinois Poetry Series) by Kevin T. Stein


Sufficiency of the Actual (Illinois Poetry Series)
Title : Sufficiency of the Actual (Illinois Poetry Series)
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0252076001
ISBN-10 : 9780252076008
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 80
Publication : First published November 26, 2008

In this ambitious collection, Kevin Stein enters the volatile intersection of private lives and larger public history. In poems variously formal and experimental, improvisational and narrative, wisely silly and playfully forlorn, Stein renders the human carnival flexed across the tattooed bulk of “history’s bicep.” Musical and refreshingly unaffected, Stein’s poems yoke the domains of high and low art. His poems address subjects by turns surprising, edgy, and humorous. They offer musings on the Slinky and the atomic bomb, elegies for a miscarried pregnancy and the late physicist Edward Teller, reflections on night-shift factory work and President Eisenhower’s golf caddy, and meditations on the politics of post-colonialism and a youthful antiwar streaking incident. Against this vivid backdrop parades a motley cast of American characters seeking wiry balance in a fragile world.

Sufficiency of the Actual (Illinois Poetry Series) Reviews

  • Melissa

    Kevin Stein, poet laureate of Illinois, shows his intense poetry skills and fortitude in language in his collection Sufficiency of the Actual. The collection opens with the heavy-hitting poem “Autumnal”, a poem about the miscarriage of his child. The poem is emotional, heart-felt, and raw, and it draws the reader immediately into the inner depths of Stein’s mind in a brilliant way. The language is incredible and moving, and lines will leave you breathless, like “‘dead baby’ you say only in the bathroom/with the water running. It’s what’s not said each time/you blow out the candle. It’s what nothing’s named after.”. And the brilliance does not end on the first poem—Stein has many more wonderful poems that dive into his thoughts, although none hit quite as hard as his opener does. He also provides excellent humorous poems, my favorite of which is the two-line poem “Talk Radio,” which had me laughing out loud in its quirky hilarity. Another favorite is another two-liner, “Religion,” which is deeply philosophical considering its brevity.

    In my opinion, it is always refreshing to read new poems free of the influence of the cannon, though I do hope that many of Stein’s poems from this collection find their place within it, as they definitely deserve to be there. I can only hope that generations from now his works will be studied in classrooms, as I know that they are deep, impactful, and brilliant, and they deserve their place within the history of poetry.

  • Mark Eleveld

    Review by Mark Eleveld, published by the Chicago Sun Times 2010
    --
    SUFFICIENCY OF THE ACTUAL
    By Kevin Stein
    University of Illinois Press, 104 pages, $16.95

    Bradley University Professor Kevin Stein also holds the post popularly distinguished by his predecessors and Chicago icons Carl Sandburg and Gwendolyn Brooks: Illinois poet laureate. While the popularity of Brooks and Sandburg is reflective
    of their sentiment in hope and desire of a Chicago working class or the poetic integration of identity and rights, Stein carves his own path in a more moderate albeit subtle and smart collection of poems. In Sufficiency of the Actual, Stein works from the particular in an attempt at arranging the universal. A skilled reader, Stein is at home playing with Aristotlean definitions and Wittgenstein conundrums as well as miscarriages and night-shift factory work. There is a healthy respect for rock 'n' roll -- the Who, for example -- and enough common sense to have a healthy disrespect for the legends who are rock 'n' roll. This is the territory where Stein cuts deep: a self-deprecating societal evaluation that has a tendency to hug and butcher, with lightning word choices that ring seconds after the last of the thunder has been heard. And in this, the question as to who we are and, even, how we got here, he is closest to his famous predecessors.