The King's Question

In poet Brian Culhane’s The King’s Question, fragments of the ancient past emerge from contemporary life to reveal rich and resonant correspondences. So the glow of a writer’s desk lamp evokes the torchlight of Viking raiders at Lindisfarne; a father’s scattered library summons the lost Library of Alexandria; the voice of a psychotherapist echoes the murmur of the Delphic oracle. With skilled craft, erudition, and daring intelligence, Culhane grapples with profound questions of time and existence, while the gods, as always, deny any certitude.

“Perhaps the best comment on these thoughtful and shapely poems is a quotation Brian Culhane himself translates from Plutarch: 'Little by little, experience dries our tears.' At a time when so many poets condescend to their audience—either by pandering to them in the name of accessibility or snubbing then with a glib, hipper-than-thou obscurity, Culhane pays his readers that high and rare compliment of assuming them to be intelligent, grown-up, well-versed, lettered and humane. It is a compliment I am confident they will rise to, and return.”

“The King’s Question gives us something remarkable in a debut collection: Not the youthful discoveries of a newborn talent, but the mature discoveries of a life lived among the classics. In these sonorous meditations the philosophers and artists of our collective past—the ones that fascinate us—join with the friends and family of the poet’s past to make a skein of asking. In Brian Culhane’s own words, 'You come at last to claim this alphabet from your still kingdom.' If, as Samuel Johnson held, the end of art is to instruct through pleasing, readers will find an abundance of both in this book.”