Why the Trumpet is Blue
Why the Trumpet is Blue
Brian Koester transforms deep wounds through the alchemy of language and the practice of poetry: “I will lie down / and listen to the larks / until the willow absorbs me.” Raw, intimate verse, intense and uninhibited, I think of the confessional poets of the late 1950s and early 60s—Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton—as I read Brian Koester’s newest volume of poetry. ~ Diana Hayes, author of “Hawking the Surf”
Part memory, part dream, part confession, part revelation—the poems in Brian Koester’s new collection, Why the Trumpet Is Blue, straddle the divide between grief and life with sensitivity and courage. Page by page, these lines give voice to spider lilies and the bogus past of spaghetti westerns; they raise the specters of childhood pains and grown up losses. Equally adept in density as in space, these poems sing at every turn. Whether it’s recalling bicycle rides, the melodies of sonatas, therapy sessions, or the mysteries of nature, Koester always writes with an uncommon, generous energy I know you will love as much as I do.
—Jack B. Bedell, author of Ghost Forest and Fight Nights, Poet Laureate of Louisiana, 2017-2019
“Brian Koester’s poems are about difficult subjects and incorporate in their syntax the difficulty of speaking them. Buried pain and its recovery, losses counted and recounted—the vision is hard and uncompromising and manifests the courage of facing up.”
Sven Birkerts, author of The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry and The Miro Worm and the Mysteries of Writing
Hiding in plain sight, here are Koester’s poems, hopefully in your hands, amidst the rubble of so much merely clever contemporary poetry. Serious, urgent poems offering honest, wryly humorous pleas for meaning in a world without obvious signs of any. This collection speaks in the language of stars and burning; language and imagery which the poet uses to reckon with, deconstruct and reconstruct his past. This dark book proves difficult but rewarding reading—brave and unflinching at what it exposes: the interplay of light and darkness at war over a human soul. I find the book to be a triumph.
Dave Mehler, author of Roadworthy, Bad Is Bent Good and editor of Triggerfish Critical Review
I struggled to get through this collection. I know, not how a blurb would typically start. The struggle wasn’t from not wanting to move on; the struggle was leaving the poem I just read. Leaving the line or turn of phrase, wanting to live in its essence for a few more breaths. There are poems here that will haunt you, but they are ghosts you want to visit and welcome in. Brian Koester created a collection that you keep close by, that years from now, your copy will have torn pages, a worn-out binding, maybe a coffee stain – that’s how often you will revisit it. - Jason Melvin, author of Brother
In Why the Trumpet is Blue, three brothers wander into a garden of roses and poison, and nothing for them is the same afterward. Brian Koester’s poems unveil crimes with stark images that reject beauty that is only toxic. These narratives subvert the language of would-be saviors and false prophets. There is so little refuge in these poems, which only magnifies the visions of love when they surface. This collection is elegant, its world offset and horrifying, inescapable, with an eternal North Star.
— Mirande Bissell, author of Stalin at the Opera