William Kloefkorn - Breathing in the Fullness of Time

Praise for William Kloefkorns This Death By Drowning

An elegant, moving little book... that reflects the authors fascination and intense personal involvement with waters big and small, from farm ponds to the South Pacific. The author writes of his youthful wonder at the familys cistern; of watching his grandmother at a washtub in the backyard, washing her long white hair in rainwater; of his and a paraplegic friends baptism in Shannons Creek, performed by a preacher whose sermons were like Kansas waterways, neither deep nor wide. Water drenches these pages, written about in a style that both immerses and quenches. Kirkus Reviews

Is there any human corner left to illuminate? To surprise? Absolutely, as these wondrous recollections by poet Kloefkorn prove. This slim volume is filled with provocative perceptions garnered from daily life.... After the last line, readers will turn back to page one and start again, slowly. Publishers Weekly

Kloefkorn writes prose with pensive grace, one thought flowing into another as water flows into rivers, lakes, and oceans that become his metaphors for the worlds connectedness. This is a quirky, funny, moving memoir full of unforgettable characters; readers will not have seen its like before and shouldnt expect to again. Library Journal

Sad, humorous, whimsical, sentimental, and of course poetic, these memoirs celebrate the profundity of life and death. Booklist

Kloefkorn is a perfect blend of poet, raconteur, and scholar. He provides breathtaking descriptions of nature, and he quotes fascinating authorities on lands and rivers, including John Neihardt, pioneer James Evans, Mark Twain, and many more. This Death by Drowning , like Kloefkorns poetryperhaps like all poetryis about the price of wonder. Wonder at nature, wonder at fate, and wonderfinally, luminouslyat the miraculous depths and tributaries of the human soul.Brent Spencer, Nebraska Life

Kloefkorns style comes not only from long attention to the world, but from sustained immersion in the art and craft of language, and from granting himself the freedom to write at length and in depth about the people and places he cares about most. Such work can rise toward sublime visions of the interconnections of people and place.Jeff Gundy, Georgia Review

Praise for Kloefkorns Restoring the Burnt Child

All writers can graspand all readers enjoyKloefkorns vivid recreations of a way of life going fast if not already gone, his talent for seizing the most luminous detail of our gray lives, his love of language, and his feel for the American idiom.... As history both personal and communal, and as performance both written and oral, this book gives us [Kloefkorn] at his best. David R. Pichaske, Great Plains Quarterly

Imagine the renegade, 14-year-old spirit of Huck Finn in the massive body of Merlin Olsen, gentlest of the giants who were the L.A. Rams legendary Fearsome Foursome, and youve got Bill Kloefkorn. Or as close as you can get. Harold E. Hall, Lincoln (NE) Journal Star

A marvelous book, full of the intensity and grittiness of language drawn from rocky Kansas fields and from great literature. Kloefkorns voice provides a perspective unlike any other Ive read, one that has had me reading out loud, saying, Listen to this.Peggy Shumaker, author of Just Breathe Normally

A fun, interesting, and compelling read, combining the best of fiction writing with the intimacy and material of memoir.Dianne Nelson Oberhansly, author of A Brief History of Male Nudes in America

Praise for Kloefkorns At Home on This Moveable Earth

Kloefkorns sonorous prose and poetic sensibilities heighten the readers perception of life... the books structure is carefully wrought; he uses counterpoint, flashbacks, shifting points of view and variations on themes to shape his memoir. Kloefkorn is a consummate storyteller with a keen eye and a gift for language that is beautiful in its simplicity. Publishers Weekly

Richly evocative.... With deftly wrought imagery so powerful and yet so poetic, this son of the plains and prairie gentles the reader back to days that nostalgia dictates must be remembered as sweetly unadorned. And yet, as Kloefkorn so cogently illustrates, no time is truly simple, and the transition from innocence to knowledge can be both magical and frightening. It takes a rare and gifted writer to seamlessly transport the reader through the devastating fury of rumbling tornadoes and the delectable freshness of romantic awakenings. Kloefkorn is just such a writer, and the journey is a lyrical experience. Booklist

Kloefkorn has a marvelous prose style that manages to be both plainspoken and fluid, with frequent dollops of humor.Lori D. Kranz, Bloomsbury Review

This author knows how to make the best of his experience, ordinary and plain and apparently dull or not.... The simple fact of the matter is that Kloefkorn is a writer who makes nearly anything, no matter how seemingly boring, lively and engaging.G. C., Sewanee Review

Ultimately this book, like Kloefkorns previous memoirs This Death by Drowning (1995) and Restoring the Burnt Child (2003), is a textbook for writers. Its eleven exemplary monologues jump cut delightfully through time while remaining grounded in place and theme: one good story after another.... Kloefkorn belongs in the company of Twain and Frost because he gets the authentic American tone of voice in his work. The joy of his poetry and of this memoir is his exploration of the familiar territory of our language and our personal and collective history.David R. Pichaske, Great Plains Quarterly

What a joy to swoop with Bill Kloefkorn through circles of memory. He leads us down into the soil of the cellar so that we might soar into the sublime tower of the tornado of his recollection.Linda Hasselstrom, author of Between Grass and Sky

Completely delightful and yet deeply thought-provoking. The voice of these essays is so personable, so easy, so intelligent, and at the same time so humble, that I felt at times as if I was listening to these essays rather than reading them. Kent Meyers, the author of The Work of Wolves

Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.
Alexander Pope, Ode on Solitude

Breathing in the Fullness of Time

Chapter 8 originally appeared in Ascent 30, no. 1 (Fall 2006) under the title The Undiminished Gift of Consolation. Chapter 7, under the title At Home in the Garden of the Gods, first appeared in the South Dakota Review 43, no. 4 (Winter 2005). Chapter 11 is reprinted from the Chrysalis Reader Passages: Timeless Voyages of Spirit 13 (2006, West Chester pa: Swedenborg Foundation Publishers), where it appeared as At Home Wherever Home Is. Chapter 9, under the title A Place between Sky and Earth, first appeared in the Sewanee Review (Summer 2008). My special thanks to the editors of these periodicals.

2009 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kloefkorn, William.
Breathing in the fullness of time / William Kloefkorn.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4962-1016-6 (electronic: e-pub)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4962-1017-3 (electronic: e-mobi)
1. Kloefkorn, William. 2. Poets, American20th centuryBiography. 3. Poets, AmericanHomes and hauntsNebraska. 4. Kloefkorn, WilliamFamily. 5. NebraskaBiography. I. Title.
PS 3561. L 626 Z 466 2009 813'.54dc22
2008038781

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