Poetry Night with John Krumberger and Thomas R. Smith

When I Was a King is dedicated to the author's wife who died in the late summer of 2019 of an undiagnosed cancer. Many of the poems deal with her unexpected death and its aftermath during a period in American life when dishonesty and brutality seemed to prevail, thus threatening such values as compassion and love of beauty that make poetry possible

While loss is the primary tone throughout this book-the loss of his beloved as well as the loss of the industrial Midwest which the author grew up in and now no longer exists-this is also a book about hope. The poems take readers through the worst darkness that life can give a person, finding a bright light shining on the other side.

John Krumberger has published two previous full volumes of poetry and a prize-winning chapbook. He retired at the end of 2023 after a long career as a psychologist and psychotherapist. In addition to a PhD in psychology from the University of Minnesota, he received an MFA in Poetry from New England College.

"Disasters uproot us, carry us along / with their flow, lock us into each other," Thomas R. Smith writes in the title poem of this abundant collection. Time and change are persistent themes, whether of youthful desire or "the bright salt of time" that stings, yet quickens us as we age.

Thomas R. Smith is an internationally known poet, essayist, editor, and teacher living in River Falls, Wisconsin. He is the author of ten books of poems, including Storm Island, Windy Day at Kabekona, and, forthcoming from Nodin Press, Heaven and Nature. He has edited a collection of Robert Bly's essays on writing poetry, The Garden Entrusted to Me, forthcoming from White Pine Press. Former Minnesota poet laureate Joyce Sutphen has called his work "wide-ranging, wise and hopeful."

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