Poems from the Mud Room: Collected Works 1976 - 2012

"Tantalizingly irreverent; Camner's work smacks of the deliciously absurd with a point. He is a brilliantly bizarre poet and master of the surreal." - Lenny DellaRocca The Poetry Museum "Camner defies the traditional aesthetic concepts of poetry. He targets a world of ideas in a rather active way as opposed to the more passive, meditative aspects found in most poetry. There is a linguistic simplicity to his poems, an almost transparent quality, over a rather complex web of experience and thought. His poetry is life... 'All you have to do is look' - The obvious and not so obvious." - Marta Braunstein, editor Cambio Literary Journal "Camner writes in terse, stark, real verse that would make Hemingway raise his scotch glass in honor." - New Times Newspaper "Camner's poetic style is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler's detective writing; descriptive and terse with interesting plot lines. His characters are certainly the product of a vivid imagination." - The Comstock Review "Camner's 'humour noir' is apparent in his poetics, his spirited voice and unabashed freedom - so alive, even in his earliest poems." - Peter Hargitai "A literary detour, and well worth the trip." - Village Voice

Poems from the Mud Room is Howard Camner's 17th poetry book. He is also the author of the autobiography Turbulence at 67 Inches. His works have been placed in prominent literary collections worldwide, including historical archives in the United States and royal libraries in the United Kingdom. Collections housing his work include the Jacques Doucet Library of Literature, the Saison Poetry Library of the Royal Festival Hall, the Victoria Library at Buckingham Palace, the Queen Mother Library of Meston Walk, the Princeton Poetry Collection, Poetry Ireland, The American Poetry Archives, the Yale Poetry Collection, the Vatican Library, the Johns Hopkins Contemporary American Poetry Collection, the Poetry Archives of the Lamont Library of Harvard, the American Jewish Historical Archives, the Elliston Poetry Collection, Poets of the Twentieth Century Collection, the Bodleian Library of Oxford, the American Library in Paris, and the Library of International Literature in Moscow. National libraries housing his work include Spain, Japan, China, Greece, Russia, India, Ireland, and France. Sound recordings of his poetry are included in the permanent poetry collection of the Library of Congress, the Stanford University Archive of Recorded Sound, and the Yale Collection of Historical Sound Recordings, among others. He was nominated for Poet Laureate of Florida in 1980 and has the distinction of having been the youngest poet nominated for a state laureateship. During his years in New York, Camner was the featured performer with the West End Poetry Troupe headquartered at the famed West End Jazz Club. Concurrently he was a founding member of the Literary Outlaws. Camner often performed in clown make-up backed by members of Duke Ellington's Orchestra known as "Ellingtonia". Camner's stage persona became as well-known as his poetry, described in Broadway Magazine as "a bittersweet Chaplinesque street character with a lot on his mi