With a half-dozen books of poetry published to date, Kenneth Fields distills some forty years of teaching and writing about poetry into Classic Rough News, a collection of fresh sonnets and sonnet-like lyrics that attests to both Fields's skills as a writer and the inexhaustible possibilities of the form. Classic Rough News follows a skeptical, cosmopolitan, intelligent, poetic presence aware that its carefully constructed veneer could crumble at any moment. In poems that mine interior dialogue for the discovery of great truths, Fields conveys feelings of awkwardness, incompleteness, conflict, and insanity - all in finely crafted verse. Ironic and skeptical, the voice in these poems records the flux of the mind, ruefully acknowledging how easy it is to deceive oneself with mixed emotions. Fully mature and unconcerned about impressions, Classic Rough News is grounded in erudition and humor, revealing how tradition and talent can push one another in unexpected directions.
