Poems of the Known World

Poems of the Known World come to us from the paradoxes and harsh juxtapositions of late 20th-century life – the unkempt homeless sleeping beside a smoothness of marble cut from mountains they will never see and used as the facings of buildings they will almost never enter; male and female reaching toward union while memories of the brutality of war pass between them; the recognition by a market futures trader that his life is as vulnerable and circumscribed as that of a frog he had dissected as a student years before.
Kistler is sometimes likened to Wallace Stevens because of his careers in both poetry and business. His concerns, however, are both contemplative and activist. He has looked at the structures of late 20th-century society and understood their effects on our lives. His language and his imagery are at times harsh, at times lyrical; they open new shapes of understanding. These poems resonate with the experiences of an intense life. A fierce seeking is here joined with an expansive heart.