In an outtake from this week’s episode of The Write Question, Livingston, Montana-based poet Michael Earl Craig (“Earl”) reads a poem from Iggy Horse (Wave Poetry).
About the book:
In Michael Earl Craig’s sixth book, poems resonate with an inscrutable logic that feels excitedly otherworldly and unsettlingly familiar, whether he be writing about the cadaver that Hans Holbein the Younger used as a model, Montana as the “Italy of God,” or the milking rituals in Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow. Not merely absurdist, Iggy Horse is a book that articulates the sadness and strangeness of American life with the poetic observations of true satire.
From the episode introduction: “Through word association and a philosophical reference of, and reverence for, art and film, Iggy Horse sees the poet and the book’s speakers reflecting on their lives—and on death. Lest you think this collection, or this conversation, heading in a dark direction, rest assured: [This] conversation with Earl is full of levity and laughter—talk of cowboy songs, genre, castles in Italy, and the wind in Livingston, Montana.”
This conversation took place while he was in Missoula for the 2023 Montana Book Festival.
About Earl:
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.
