Synopsis
T.L. Kryss is an outsider's outsider and as sweet a poet as I've ever encountered. He was part of the Cleveland poetry scene in the Sixties that had d.a. levy as its catalyst and got hammered hard by the police�What Tom Kryss does, more than any poet I know, is strip away excess and cut to the bone. He staked out a modest turf and then hunkered down and stayed there. So that what he writes is unencumbered and fraught with the particular, which is the unique, which is the only way to get a handle on the universal. What he writes always gives you something and never takes anything away. -John Bennett (Vagabond Press, from the �Introduction�) ---------- It is heartening to see Bottom Dogs Press join in the effort to preserve the masterpieces that got lost in the 20th Century's howls and whimpers, juvenile boasts and frostbitten theories. Tom Kryss is a poet who sees the world as puzzles within puzzles. The puzzles can be Rubic's cubes or jigsaw pieces that form an image of the Berlin Wall or the boundless energy of a little girl who can't remain confined in her grandfather's lap when they visit her father in prison. Kryss' narratives and parables include some of the best most open descriptions of the mimeo revolution yet written, and memories of his friend and mentor, d.a.levy. As a poet completely free from pretension, trendiness, and poses, Kryss' verse achieves a cleanliness which many of his contemporaries strove for but could not manage. Line after well paced and modulated line offers fascinating stories and meditations without strain or waste. In one of the many odd twists of fortune that surround the neglect of this opus, Kryss may be the supreme master of patience when that gift has been nearly forgotten. Aside from the satisfactions of reading Kryss' poems, he may be giving his readers a model of how to talk to each other. -Karl Young
About the Author
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, I began publishing in 1966 under the Ghost Press imprint, reasoning that a printer was of negligible utility separated from his equipment in jail, and that books dropped on the street without address or copyright would obscure the trail leading back to the source. After moving to San Francisco in the spring of 1968, and escaping the necessity of confounding prosecution, I abandoned the effacement and set my hand to producing titles of poetry under the Cold Mountain Publishing Company and Black Rabbit Press imprints. The colophons continued to confer all rights on everyone, or to the authors, without listing specific points of origin. I returned to Cleveland in 1968, traveled back to the West Coast in 1969, and retrenched in Cleveland in 1970. Married in this year, we moved around the city with less mileage but on the same scales of frequency. My wife�s drawings began to appear regularly as serigraphs on the covers of the books. The hands of four children surfaced as interior fingerprints, tailing off in the 90�s. In 2002 I retired from my job of 32 years as a dispatcher; that is, telling others where to go. With the aid of a global positioning device, I and my wife Carolyn moved to Charlestown, Ohio, as the ice was breaking up, revealing hubcaps and wildflowers at the sides of the roads.
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