Your Eureka Not Mined - Poetry by Christopher T. Keaveney

Publication Date: March 1, 2017
Paperback, 92 pages
ISBN: 978-1-937968-31-1

Available from Small Press Distribution

Chris Keaveney’s debut poetry collection is a litany of the almost, “What the leaves in the bottom of the cup / should have said, / had we but waited for them to settle.” But if he often writes of arriving late, of stopping just short, of ideals nearly believed in, of songs learned save for a single chord, there is nothing left wanting in his language, which is exquisitely precise, full of catch-your-breath moments. Through these deceptively gently poems we learn to pay attention to the details that unmask the mysteries, like a grandfather who knows “the difference between lacquer and varnish”, or “the way / rain clung to pine that morning / like a drunken lover’s / apology”, and to arrive at what is for each of us – as in the closing word in the book – “precious.” There is much wisdom on offer here, but none better than the reminder that “The only promises that matter…/ are the ones we make to ourselves.”

Praise for Christopher Keaveney & Your Eureka Not Mined

Christopher Keaveney's poems – I use all the following terms advisedly – address and respect the full range of a reader's sensibility. They provide substantial challenges and substantial satisfaction. I grant them equal respect and will reread them.

William I. Elliott, author of An Evening’s Entertainment

What makes a poet memorable to me is the ability to make me sit up and feel a wow moment, an idea, a poetic line or a usage of words that says to me this poet is unique. Christopher Keaveney is that kind of poet. I had those moments when I read Keaveney's poems. They are of high quality and belong in “the show” which is baseball talk for the major leagues.

Zvi A. Sesling, author of Across Stones of Bad Dreams & Fire Tongue

Subtle, wry, sinuous, insisting – the poems in Christopher T. Keaveney’s debut, Your Eureka Not Mined, deal in distance: the distance of memory, of language, of metaphor. “[I]n the darkness,” Keaveney writes, “I brush away something / that may turn out to be grass / or pity.” And that’s the very space the poet attempts to map here, the difficult geography between the interior and the exterior, between our labyrinthine psyches and the wild, multitudinous world. It’s a challenging endeavor, and this is a finely wrought collection is up to the task. Your Eureka Not Mined is full of nuance, complexity, and surprise, just the way “the gabardine knot / of memory” unfolds in “a shower of blossoms.”

Joe Wilkins, author of The Mountain and the Fathers, Killing the Murnion Dogs, & When We Were Birds

Christopher T. Keaveney received his undergraduate degree in English from Manhattan College and his MA in Japanese Language and Literature and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Washington University in St. Louis. He also pursued graduate studies at Tsukuba University in Ibaraki, Japan and at Fudan University in Shanghai and taught abroad in American Samoa, Japan, and China. Keaveney previously taught Japanese language and East Asian literature and film courses at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon and is the author of three books about Japanese Japanese culture and Sino-Japanese literary relations. His poetry has appeared in Columbia Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, , Wilderness House Literary Review, and elsewhere, and several of his English language haiku have appeared in the Mainichi Daily News. He lives in Japan with his wife Shigeko and his daughters Bridget and Erica.