Kayla Benson, Chautauqua Editorial Assistant
Reviews Count Four, by Keith Kopka
Keith Kopka is a former punk musician, early Chautauqua staff member, University of North Carolina MFA graduate, Florida State University PhD graduate, Holy Family assistant professor—and a talented poet.
In 2019, his debut poetry collection, Count Four, won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. Along with a monetary award, the collection was published in both hard and soft cover in the fall of 2020.
The Tampa Review judges praised Kopka’s work noting the “clarity of voice and surprising textures of metaphor that elevate his appealing, informal language…. Before we know it, we’re caught up in the real power of a poet driving a vehicle that can smooth and restore the surfaces, leaving them ready to accept fresh scars as the next virtuoso performance or power play begins.”
That clarity of voice develops over years. Writers are readers. When Kopka comments on those poets he loves to read he characterizes them in this way: “I can say that I typically value impeccable craft, risks with form and content, strong images, and clarity of voice when I am reading poetry.” Reading shapes writers. About his own work he shares this thought: “Count Four is a highly personal collection of poems. It’s a book about trying to reconcile the more toxic aspects of masculine identity and understand the forces that shape that identity.” From poems about hockey to the rough and sometimes dangerous world of punk music, the poems explore the way people are drawn to danger.”
In a piece he wrote for the Kenyon Review’s blog, he explains it like this: “these poems are a hymn to how lucky I know I am. Many people that I’ve loved have died because of their id-driven and sophomoric death-wish mentalities. With the benefit of time as a filter, I have come to realize that in many cases, I was one decision away from a similar fate. The gallows humor in these poems is a way for me to confront and find catharsis, despite the guilt that I often feel in relationship to my survival.”
So, imagine our excitement when the book came to us. The editorial team shared the collection and were reminded that every now and again, a collection of poetry moves and teaches in unexpected ways.
Here is a collection of poems that is brutally honest, raw, and intriguing—everything a reader should want. From the intensity of family drama to the journey of a drunken rock star to quieter adventures with friends in familiar places, Kopka hits all the marks and leaves no stone unturned. Deft at using the conventions of poetry—line breaks, punctuation, and even alignment—these poems are intense. Some poems use ellipses to great advantage to manage the stories as they jump through time and to ensure that they stay connected and flow well. The structures illustrate Kopka’s thoughtful attention to detail. Consider this gorgeous moment of recognition embedded in a seedy late-night sexual encounter in an alley: “The trick music plays on us all / is that we believe what we feel when / we listen is more than we’ve already / felt.”
Order and coherence are important to help the reader move easily down the page without stopping or losing the sense of the overall message. One poem that does this particularly well is “Notes on Speed.” The short lines, some of them just one to a few words, capture the sense of speeding down the road. “Committed / to the belief that / she wants the lie / as much as I think / I need to tell it.” The poem is quickly paced but also manages a sense of calm as it reflects the inner thoughts of the speaker. There’s a lot of interiority in this collection, which provides the reader with a connection to the mind and feelings of the one telling the stories. Passion and vulnerability infuse every poem; even those that end simply have a deep impact that resonates.
Craftsmanship is developed over time, the culmination of hours of practice. In a recent blog for the Kenyon Review,Kopka explains how this collection came to be: “The poems within the collection were written over a ten-year period, and the revision process was ongoing for about three years even after I thought that I had a good enough draft to begin sending the manuscript out to competitions and to editors… I have come to value revision at least as much as, and sometimes more so than, composition itself. I think that the cornerstone that helped this collection take shape occurred when I finally finished the long poem ‘Tour.’”
At the center of this collection, it is that attention to craft that makes things shine. Erin Belieu describes it this way: “Keith is one of the most naturally gifted and hard-working poets I've ever had the pleasure to work with. It's really lovely when a former student grows into being a peer and a dear friend… It was wonderful watching his sheer dedication to his craft, watching those poems come into being with such vividness and intensity. I really admire Keith's commitment to the art and the daring of his work.”
Kopka’s energy and commitment to the literary community is equally impressive. He is the co-founder and the Director of Operations for Writers Resist, an international coalition of writers resisting the erosion of diverse expression and humane values, and a Senior Editor at Narrative Magazine
You can purchase Count Four from the University of Tampa Press, at Barnes and Nobles, or Amazon.com. You can also purchase Kopka’s critical text Asking a Shadow to Dance: An Introduction to the Practice of Poetry from Great River Learning Press.