Coal Man’s Son by T. Crunk

Tony Crunk knows coal country intimately, Biblically, and mythically. In Coal Man’s Son, he gives us an allegory drawn from deep, personal understanding, with characters such as “one-eyed bone” and “the blind crow,” “Old Scratchfiddle” and “blood boy,” evoking “ten thousand years/of sorrow/and salt,” and bones in the devil’s butcher shop that “glow like radio tubes.” These haunting poems make us laugh and sing and ponder. Part trickster tale and part tall tale, part jazz and part blues, part folklife and part folklore, Coal Man’s Son is another marvelous collection by a master of the craft.

–Peter F. Murphy, author of Underwater and Maps of Three Continents

If ever Paul Celan imagined his blazeair darkruddering through our sweet Devil’s furnace then we have Crunk’s One Eyed Bone surfing hellwinds in the coal mines of Kentucky dark, dark. Coal Man’s Son testifies that as “death was much in demand” (Celan) in those festering sores called Auschwitz and Buchenwald, then shooting dice in hell holes seamed with carbon selfsames, and but so…on it goes. Down in the earthfire we go with Crunk, scorched and none the wiser with two holes in our coffin—one to let the devil in, one for the ashed spirit to rise, yes rise.

–Russell Helms, author of The Ground Catches Everything and Fade