This volume, the first to span the forty-year career of Nebraska state poet William Kloefkorn, brings together the best-known and most beloved poems by one of the most important Midwestern poets of the last half century. Collecting work from limited editions and hard-to-find books, along with Kloefkorn's most anthologized poems, Swallowing the Soap is an indispensable one-volume compendium of the work of a major American poet. "These poems aim for nothing less than the impossible: to understand what it means to be alive and human on this moveable earth," writes the editor, Ted Genoways. Swallowing the Soap is filled with the panoramic landscapes of Kansas and Nebraska, the stories of the rough and tender people who live there, and the moments of heartache, brutality, loss, and redeeming joy that shape their lives. It offers a vision, at once intimate and expansive, of the world of the Great Plains as seen by one of its most eloquent poets.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments   Introduction: A Life Like Yours by Ted Genoways New Poems   Eating Mulberries for Breakfast     World War Two     Waiting for the End     Living Without It Rainbow     Fairbanks, Late July    What He Said      Babble      Confrontation     Surgery     October     Dread Haywire     Horseshoes and Hand Grenades  Let There Be Music      Driving through the Winnebago Reservation on My Way to Sioux Falls      Schooling   South Padre Island, Early Evening   At the Pantry     Memory      Moving      Over the Years    Along Highway 14 in Southern Washington   What the Churchbells Say      An Old Story      Learning to Soar  Low Tide at Oregon's Waikki Beach   Late Morning, Almost Noon     Weeding     Upon Planning to Break My Fast a Day Early      Now the Juniper   Arrival     Tea   Birdsong    Newborn     Silence     Red Cedar   Writer in Residence at Sheridan Elementary      With My Wife at the Super Saver     Ponderosa   Singing Just for the Music of It    Accessories Name  Purple Iris Dying to Get by with Everything     Bringing Up the Rear    Selected Poems from Alvin Turner as Farmer      From Uncertain the Final Run to Winter    Uncertain the Final Run to Winter         Country Boy       Cleaning Out My Dead Grandfather's Barn         Dec. 8, 1941            Prime Moving      LTL   Town Team   The Spring House  Unloneliness Poem Selected Poems from Loony     Selected Poems from ludi jr   From Stocker      Fairport          Elsie Martin            Mrs. Wilma Hunt         Sonny       Urie        The Rearranging         Stocker     From Cottonwood County  Beginnings        New Year's Eve          Jubilation        Out-and-Down Pattern          My Love for All Things Warm and Breathing       If Only I Can Shake Off This Dream All the Others Should Follow         I Don't Like Having a Grasshopper in My Hair          Daddy (Drunk) Mows the Lawn at Midnight         Benediction Selected Poems from Leaving Town    From Not Such a Bad Place to Be     Not Such a Bad Place to Be          Teenage Halloween For My Wife's Father          Braces            Returning to Caves            Thanksgiving            Final Scenario #6       Epitaph for a Grandfather     From Let the Dance Begin      Benediction       My Granddaughter, Age 3, Tells Me the Story of the Wizard of Oz         For My Brother, Who Has New False Teeth   Selected Poems from Honeymoon Selected Poems from Platte Valley Homestead     Selected Poems from Houses and Beyond     From within the First House   Each Board that Formed the Next House     I Had Been Chained and Padlocked    Franklin Walked Off the Deep End    On a Hot Day after Rain Janet Moved Away  Standing on the Back Porch    Mother Said She Was Glad Now  Taking the Milk to Grandmother      Killing the Swallows    Rushing the Season      In the Treehouse with Franklin      Whatever Is Elevated and Pure, Precisely on Key On the Road: Sunday, March 6, 1977  From Collecting for the Wichita Beacon    Collecting for the Wichita Beacon         Sowing the Whirlwind          Waiting to Jell         One of Those            Cornsilk          Solitude    From A Life Like Mine   Onion Syrup       The Great Depression          Christmas 1939          Sunday Morning          Prove It          Black Cat         Walking the Tracks      Kicking Leaves    My Daughter Pregnant    From Where the Visible Sun Is Creation          Fixing Flats      Christmas 1940          The Louvre  For Proof   An Interlude for Morning      The Day I Pedaled My Girlfriend Betty Lou All the Way Around the Paper Route  You Have Lived Long Enough    Undressing by Lamplight Easter Sunday     From Drinking the Tin Cup Dry Last Summer and the One Before            A Red Ryder BB-Gun for Christmas          George Eat Old Gray Rat at Pappy's House Yesterday          At Shannon's Creek, Early August          Drinking with My Father       Firstborn         Walking to the Hinky Dinky with My Grandson, Almost 4       Looking for Halley's Comet          Taking the Test         Watercolor: The Door          Driving Back to Kansas to Watch a Wedding       Independent       Cave        Drinking the Tin Cup Dry      From Dragging Sand Creek for Minnows      Last of the Mohicans          Running Home            Jumping Rope            Driving Back Home in My Wife's Father's Old Chevrolet       Wildwood, Early Autumn        Write a Blank-Verse Poem Using Someone Else's Voice, Someone Dead, Someone Who You Believe Was Not Treated Fairly While Alive      Achilles' Heel          At Maggie's Pond        Burning the House Down  From Going Out, Coming Back   Dress       Swallowing the Soap           Dancing in the Cornfield      Epiphany          Odyssey           Last Day of School            Jacks Fishing with My Two Boys at a Spring-Fed Pond in Kansas     Outage      From Burning the Hymnal The Color of Dusk       Threnody          This is the Photograph Not Taken          Back to Kansas          Going There Sometime          Legend            Odyssey     From Treehouse: New and Selected Poems    Not Dreaming            Separations       The Day the Earthquake Was Scheduled to Happen But Didn't         Non-Stop Begonias       On a Porch Swing Swinging           After the Drunk Crushed My Father         Treehouse         Singing Hymns with Unitarians       A City Waking Up  From Covenants    Covenant          Learning the Drum       Rainfall          KTSW, Sunday Morning          Saturday Night          Last Visit        Geese       Afternoon in October          Counting the Cows       Church            Sustaining the Curse    From Welcome to Carlos  Welcome to Carlos       Stuka       Home        Gypsy Rose        Back Roads        Balls       The Great Depression          Revival           Reap the Wild Wind            Quixotic          Circus            Limits            Giddy       Sand Creek        Dirt        Departures        Pennies     From Loup River Psalter Song  Flannel           Bushmill    Song  Instrumental      Requiem     Catfishing  Woodshed    Connections Blues Selected Poems from Sergeant Patrick Gass, Chief Carpenter: On the Trail with Lewis & Clark      From Fielding Imaginary Grounders   Learning Chautauqua           Countries         Bushes Burning          For Some Strange Reason       Covenants         Walking the Grounds at St. Elizabeth Hospital, DC           Somewhere in the Vicinity of Ecclesiastes The Almost Dead         Soul        Remembering Religion          Brothers          Desiring Desire   From Sunrise, Dayglow, Sunset, Moon Balsa Star of the East  In a Church Basement Damp from Last Night's Rain      Sawdust     Javelin     Moving      Living with Others      Library of No Return    In the Black Hills Whistling Dixie  At Hemlock Hollow Near Logan, Ohio  Funeral for an Old Woman      For My Wife's Mother    Watching My Granddaughter, 7, Test for Her Purple Belt      Not Dreaming      Discoveries Shooting the Rabbit     From Walking the Campus Nouns       November 22, 1963       Assignment        Theater           Moving On         August 12, 1992         After the Ice Storm           Connections: A Toast    From Still Life Moving  Braids      Proud Flight            Quest       Spheres           Water       Sleep       Grass Woman       Still Life Moving From Out of Attica      Early July  After the First Good Early-Spring Shower  Avon Calling      Titles      Looking for Scrap Iron at the Village Dump      Digging     Distances   August      Darkroom    Saved Bits & Pieces     We Take My Wife's Father Fishing One More Time  Flying over Chicago     At the Mayo Clinic      Daughters   From In a House Made of Time        Walking and Looking Down            Crossing Heaven