Overview

Standing in the space between lives, this collection from the award-winning poet raises a glass to our increasingly untethered world and offers a meditation on the one yet to come. In Oh Oblivion, Robert Krut presents poems written from the island between lives. They look out on a world disappearing, filled with the surreality of a city where a cardboard box containing a human heart awaits discovery (""Nocturnal Cartography"") to a country where gasping birds cough up coins in a now-drained lake (""The Loons""). While current life is keenly observed, the poems turn to what lies ahead, investigating the narratives that are yet to take place, where simple earnest gestures linger (""An Offering Is Infinite"") and ""the ghosts of the future"" turn to the comfort of a resetting solar system (""Oh Amnesia""). Standing in the space between worlds, the poems take a hard-earned stock of where we are but make a toast as we step forward on uncertain and unseen ground.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert Krut (Continuing Lecturer, University of California, Santa Barbara)
Publisher:   Codhill Press
Imprint:   Codhill Press
ISBN:  

9781949933314

ISBN 10:   1949933318
Pages:   57
Publication Date:   15 October 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Oblivion's Desk Nocturnal Cartography Interior Decorating The Cryptid Photosynthetic Self Surgery Improvised Plasticulture The Somnambulist's Table Paperwork The Darkness Go with Terror Drinking a Single Glass of Water The Loons Too Old for New Devils Dancing Underwater Thirst Writing the Bible's Footnotes Negotiation Skills The Divine Butcher Water Prayer A Story About the Feast An Apple Is an End unto Itself A Burning Sun Never Sets You Can Always Blame Something Keep Your Intentions Close The Arborist Speaks Lighting Up the Garden of Eden Biosonar Dawn Cloud as Gravity A Toast The Colony The Solution Eats Its Own Tail The Driver Travel Correspondence Sound Is Light, Light Confesses The Showman's Humble Request Picnicking Embark Housesitting Backdrop to the Backdrop Unintended Borders Lunar Bargaining An Offering Is Infinite Oh Amnesia Notes Acknowledgements About the Author

Reviews

""The poems in this collection undulate and glitter darkly like light on deep water; they exist between here and some other place, high-up, where the whole of the human myth first began. They know the almighty power words possess, and they wonder, if I quench my thirst, who stays damned to dry up? They are heavy with the responsibility of our history to this planet and our ability to keep showing up for each other. Often these poems speak to us in the morning as if to tell us that we, too, have been sleeping, and it is time to wake up. Krut's honesty feels sacred; his generosity gives us a safe place in which to reflect and galvanize. Oh Oblivion is truly a collection to read and reread for years to come."" — Colleen Louise Barry, author of Colleen ""Oh Oblivion is a startling collection of oddities. These poems are constantly negotiating with the reader, daring us into dream-like spaces of the poet's creation. A lake has a heart, God is created from pages of leaves (by whom?), 'The sunset is caught / in the throat of this neighborhood, / where we stab the dusk // with abruptly started cars.' There is truth to be found here—these poems are often eco-poetical with wildfires, petroleum, empty lakes, and strangled birds—reality read through the language of dream. This collection attempts the divine, and invites us as readers to its altar."" — Danielle Hanson, author of The Night Is What It Eats ""'Prayer or toast, / I don't know which / I'm writing at this hour.' So begins the phantasmagoric, midnight lyricism of Robert Krut's latest work, Oh Oblivion. Through his balletic prosody and kaleidoscopic leaps, Krut fashions a realm where the quotidian and the grotesque merge, blurring the line between the dysphoria of our waking lives and the raw matter of the dreamworld. At turns philosopher, dancer, apparition, and cryptid, Krut raises the membranous curtain of our consciousness, imploring us to sail along the waters of our knotted limbos to discover the interstitial prayers that our reflections whisper back to us when we sleep. It's in these liminal spaces that Krut's beautiful disquiet shines, asking us to sink into the absurd, raise a glass to our apparitions, and offer a 'Prayer or toast, a coming or going / an exit, an entrance.'"" — Adam Stutz, author of The Sham Tapestry

Author Information

Robert Krut is also the author of Watch Me Trick Ghosts; The Now Dark Sun, Setting Us All on Fire (which received the Codhill Poetry Award); This Is the Ocean; and The Spider Sermons. He teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the Writing Program and College of Creative Studies and lives in Los Angeles.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions