Very Focused: A Review of IGGY HORSE by Michael Earl Craig

Review by Nate Logan. Wave Books, 2023, 96 pages

In an interview with the defunct journal HoboEye, Michael Earl Craig says, “I think a lot of people say something is surreal or odd when really it’s just very focused. If I talk passionately about a potato chip for forty minutes someone will call this ‘surreal.’ But is it?” While critical discussions (j'accuse?) of surrealism in contemporary poetry have dissipated, Craig’s poetry output has not. In his sixth full-length collection, Iggy Horse, Craig mixes new and old to charming effect, exploring fresh poetic territory while retaining his signature black, deadpan humor.

Part of the new territory Craig stakes out can be found in the book’s ekphrastic poems. There are four in Iggy Horse (I’m not including “Chocolate Santa” though one could argue that a chocolate Santa is art). Of course, ekphrastic poems are nothing new, but from a collection by Craig they are. From “Portrait of the Writer Max Herrmann-Neisse”:

He looks like a hunchbacked banker

crossed with a baby bird

who has fallen from the middle branches

(sound of nearby mowers)

[…] He wears

a mood ring, pinky finger. 

It’s ruby red but can we trust it? 

He will not budge, it’s safe to say. 

His lips are pursed. 

His grip is gnarled—it’s loose

yet tight. The streets are cold. 

It’s Tuesday night. (39-40)

And from “Calf Worship”:

[…]

Technique: Oil

Materials: Canvas/oil

Description: Description forthcoming.

And yet we know him.

Cloth a sailor’s blue.

An allegorical blue.

The blue of the pallbearer?

A boutonniere blue.

Get closer.

The painting makes a sound—

air being released—

a light groan—

calf breath—

the squeak of leather. (42)

Both poems combine vivid, matter-of-fact description with additions by Craig that evoke eeriness and loneliness. There’s no indication in the painting The Writer Max Herrmann-Neisse as to the day or weather. But Craig’s brief additions at the end of “Portrait of the Writer Max Herrmann-Neisse” add a new layer to both the painting and poem. Similarly, “Calf Worship” includes facts about the painting it’s based on, but the twist in this piece revolves around the grammatical person, a speaker that beckons us to approach.

It’s hard not to approach these poems, not only to see what Craig is doing that’s new, but also with an anticipation of scenarios he continues to revisit throughout his work. There’s another Christmas (“Saint Finbar, Burbank”), a trip by plane (“Somewhere Over Greenland”), and horses (“Jeepers”). His poems also continue to be threaded with humor, although this time around, the strain seems more gallows in nature. Perhaps the most striking example of this appears in the first two stanzas of “Doctor Fauci”:

Through the garden he moves

like a flesh-and-blood C-3PO,

the last man standing

or one of three living people

okay seventeen but

of them he’s one of

only three still gardening

and he does not have a mask on. (28)

The poem begins in a funny enough matter, comparing Dr. Fauci’s to that of a famous fictional robot—it’s an image anyone familiar with C-3PO can see. The poem immediately takes a dark turn: we learn that COVID-19 has “won,” but then the poem undercuts this revelation via stanza break: “the last man standing / or one of three living people // okay seventeen but” (3-5). The first half of “Doctor Fauci” wraps on the sobering note that he’s not wearing a mask while gardening and we know why. 

Iggy Horse is another bleakly funny and haunting entry in Michael Earl Craig’s bibliography. Craig’s mastery of crafting quiet moments is endlessly engaging, whether he’s describing “End Times” or Wallace Stevens about to ring a doorbell. In the last lines of “Shelter in Place” there’s a “steady draft moving / from one cold end / of the house to the other” (11). In Iggy Horse and in waking life, we feel it.

Iggy Horse is available from Wave Books.

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Reviewer Nate Logan is the author of Wrong Horse (Moria Books, fall of 2023) and Inside the Golden Days of Missing You (Magic Helicopter Press, 2019). He lives in Indiana.

Author Michael Earl Craig is from Dayton, Ohio, home of the gas mask and the mood ring. He is the author of Iggy Horse (Wave Books, 2023), Woods and Clouds Interchangeable (Wave Books, 2019), Talkativeness (Wave Books, 2014), Thin Kimono (Wave Books, 2010), Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006), Can You Relax in My House, (Fence Books, 2002), and the chapbook Jombang Jet (Factory Hollow Press, 2012). He lives in Montana, where he makes his living as a farrier. He was the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Montana.