Swallowing the Soap

William Kloefkorn (1932–2011) was an emeritus professor of English at Nebraska Wesleyan University and Nebraska's state poet. He is the author of many volumes of poetry and a four-volume memoir: This Death by Drowning, Restoring the Burnt Child, At Home on This Moveable Earth, and Breathing in the Fullness of Time, all published by the University of Nebraska Press.  Ted Genoways is the editor of Virginia Quarterly Review and the author of Bullroarer: A Sequence. He has edited numerous books, including The Selected Poems of Miguel Hernández.

"There is always the rock; there is always Kloefkorn: generous, honest, ornery, clear-eyed. I invite you to read this very significant book, No. 2 pencil in hand, and mark your favorites."—Marge Saiser, Lincoln Journal Star "Kloefkorn's ear for the midwestern rural vernacular is pitch-perfect, and his lines of dialogue and bits of country speech are alternately hilarious and deeply poignant."—Michael Sowder, Western American Literature

• Acknowledgments   Introduction: A Life Like Yours by Ted Genoways New Poems   Eating Mulberries for Breakfast     World War Two     Waiting for the End     Living Without It Rainbow     Fairbanks, Late July    What He Said      Babble      Confrontation     Surgery     October     Dread Haywire     Horseshoes and Hand Grenades  Let There Be Music      Driving through the Winnebago Reservation on My Way to Sioux Falls      Schooling   South Padre Island, Early Evening   At the Pantry     Memory      Moving      Over the Years    Along Highway 14 in Southern Washington   What the Churchbells Say      An Old Story      Learning to Soar  Low Tide at Oregon's Waikki Beach   Late Morning, Almost Noon     Weeding     Upon Planning to Break My Fast a Day Early      Now the Juniper   Arrival     Tea   Birdsong    Newborn     Silence     Red Cedar   Writer in Residence at Sheridan Elementary      With My Wife at the Super Saver     Ponderosa   Singing Just for the Music of It    Accessories Name  Purple Iris Dying to Get by with Everything     Bringing Up the Rear    Selected Poems from Alvin Turner as Farmer      From Uncertain the Final Run to Winter    Uncertain the Final Run to Winter   Country Boy Cleaning Out My Dead Grandfather's Barn   Dec. 8, 1941      Prime Moving      LTL   Town Team   The Spring House  Unloneliness Poem Selected Poems from Loony     Selected Poems from ludi jr   From Stocker      Fairport    Elsie Martin      Mrs. Wilma Hunt   Sonny Urie  The Rearranging   Stocker     From Cottonwood County  Beginnings  New Year's Eve    Jubilation  Out-and-Down Pattern    My Love for All Things Warm and Breathing If Only I Can Shake Off This Dream All the Others Should Follow   I Don't Like Having a Grasshopper in My Hair    Daddy (Drunk) Mows the Lawn at Midnight   Benediction Selected Poems from Leaving Town    From Not Such a Bad Place to Be     Not Such a Bad Place to Be    Teenage Halloween For My Wife's Father    Braces      Returning to Caves      Thanksgiving      Final Scenario #6 Epitaph for a Grandfather     From Let the Dance Begin      Benediction My Granddaughter, Age 3, Tells Me the Story of the Wizard of Oz   For My Brother, Who Has New False Teeth   Selected Poems from Honeymoon Selected Poems from Platte Valley Homestead     Selected Poems from Houses and Beyond     From within the First House   Each Board that Formed the Next House     I Had Been Chained and Padlocked    Franklin Walked Off the Deep End    On a Hot Day after Rain Janet Moved Away  Standing on the Back Porch    Mother Said She Was Glad Now  Taking the Milk to Grandmother      Killing the Swallows    Rushing the Season      In the Treehouse with Franklin      Whatever Is Elevated and Pure, Precisely on Key On the Road: Sunday, March 6, 1977  From Collecting for the Wichita Beacon    Collecting for the Wichita Beacon   Sowing the Whirlwind    Waiting to Jell   One of Those      Cornsilk    Solitude    From A Life Like Mine   Onion Syrup The Great Depression    Christmas 1939    Sunday Morning    Prove It    Black Cat   Walking the Tracks      Kicking Leaves    My Daughter Pregnant    From Where the Visible Sun Is Creation    Fixing Flats      Christmas 1940    The Louvre  For Proof   An Interlude for Morning      The Day I Pedaled My Girlfriend Betty Lou All the Way Around the Paper Route  You Have Lived Long Enough    Undressing by Lamplight Easter Sunday     From Drinking the Tin Cup Dry Last Summer and the One Before      A Red Ryder BB-Gun for Christmas    George Eat Old Gray Rat at Pappy's House Yesterday    At Shannon's Creek, Early August    Drinking with My Father Firstborn   Walking to the Hinky Dinky with My Grandson, Almost 4 Looking for Halley's Comet    Taking the Test   Watercolor: The Door    Driving Back to Kansas to Watch a Wedding Independent Cave  Drinking the Tin Cup Dry      From Dragging Sand Creek for Minnows      Last of the Mohicans    Running Home      Jumping Rope      Driving Back Home in My Wife's Father's Old Chevrolet Wildwood, Early Autumn  Write a Blank-Verse Poem Using Someone Else's Voice, Someone Dead, Someone Who You Believe Was Not Treated Fairly While Alive      Achilles' Heel    At Maggie's Pond  Burning the House Down  From Going Out, Coming Back   Dress Swallowing the Soap     Dancing in the Cornfield      Epiphany    Odyssey     Last Day of School      Jacks Fishing with My Two Boys at a Spring-Fed Pond in Kansas     Outage      From Burning the Hymnal The Color of Dusk Threnody    This is the Photograph Not Taken    Back to Kansas    Going There Sometime    Legend      Odyssey     From Treehouse: New and Selected Poems    Not Dreaming      Separations The Day the Earthquake Was Scheduled to Happen But Didn't   Non-Stop Begonias On a Porch Swing Swinging     After the Drunk Crushed My Father   Treehouse   Singing Hymns with Unitarians A City Waking Up  From Covenants    Covenant    Learning the Drum Rainfall    KTSW, Sunday Morning    Saturday Night    Last Visit  Geese Afternoon in October    Counting the Cows Church      Sustaining the Curse    From Welcome to Carlos  Welcome to Carlos Stuka Home  Gypsy Rose  Back Roads  Balls The Great Depression    Revival     Reap the Wild Wind      Quixotic    Circus      Limits      Giddy Sand Creek  Dirt  Departures  Pennies     From Loup River Psalter Song  Flannel     Bushmill    Song  Instrumental      Requiem     Catfishing  Woodshed    Connections Blues Selected Poems from Sergeant Patrick Gass, Chief Carpenter: On the Trail with Lewis & Clark      From Fielding Imaginary Grounders   Learning Chautauqua     Countries   Bushes Burning    For Some Strange Reason Covenants   Walking the Grounds at St. Elizabeth Hospital, DC     Somewhere in the Vicinity of Ecclesiastes The Almost Dead   Soul  Remembering Religion    Brothers    Desiring Desire   From Sunrise, Dayglow, Sunset, Moon Balsa Star of the East  In a Church Basement Damp from Last Night's Rain      Sawdust     Javelin     Moving      Living with Others      Library of No Return    In the Black Hills Whistling Dixie  At Hemlock Hollow Near Logan, Ohio  Funeral for an Old Woman      For My Wife's Mother    Watching My Granddaughter, 7, Test for Her Purple Belt      Not Dreaming      Discoveries Shooting the Rabbit     From Walking the Campus Nouns November 22, 1963 Assignment  Theater     Moving On   August 12, 1992   After the Ice Storm     Connections: A Toast    From Still Life Moving  Braids      Proud Flight      Quest Spheres     Water Sleep Grass Woman Still Life Moving From Out of Attica      Early July  After the First Good Early-Spring Shower  Avon Calling      Titles      Looking for Scrap Iron at the Village Dump      Digging     Distances   August      Darkroom    Saved Bits & Pieces     We Take My Wife's Father Fishing One More Time  Flying over Chicago     At the Mayo Clinic      Daughters   From In a House Made of Time  Walking and Looking Down      Crossing Heaven