Naming Names

• Some of These Days
• Rodin & Co.
• Old Man Laughing
• Stepping Twice into the River: Following Dakota Waters
• What It Was Like
• Naming Names
  • Reviews
  • Samples
  • Ordering Information
• Learning American

Reviews: Naming Names (Palanquin Press, 2001; 2nd edition 2006)

“These poems burst their boundaries up and down and margin outwards towards the still untamed infinity of words, work their coordinates through restless references and indexes always towards a greater shifting irony that bends and warps like bodies in a fun house mirror. No discipline measured in either language or numbers escapes his testing, no starting point so commonplace its mystery and strangeness does not taunt him and tease us. What results is the naming of Naming Names, part Adam's assertion of the world, part necessary price of admission to the numinous carnival of plenitude which is our lives. Always somehow, through it all, Bob retains his fresh-faced enthusiasm and his wry good humor.” (Greg Kuzma)

“I love the freedoms Bob calls on in the longer poems, and the fact that he's taken the poems on, to spin their stories out as if they carried knots that tightened and then slipped free.” (Jay Meek)

“What a funny, intelligent poet King is! I admire his serious sense of play.” (Twyla Hansen)

 “A boffo performance!” (Phebe Davidson, editor of Palanquin Press)