Morris’ Poetry Does Not Waste Time

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This is a work obsessed with the coming death. Whether it is to be the death of a person or of a way of life it does not matter, The Collected Poems of K Morris, recognizes that there is an end to all things. Poet K. Morris released this work in 2019. The structure of the majority of his pieces follows an alternating rhyme scheme. The poet also keeps most of his work short and to the point.

The collection will make readers rather sad for the speaker. There is a gloominess lingering over The Selected Poems of K Morris that is hard to ignore. The speaker mourns death’s unhindered advance but isn’t showed to be celebrating anything about being alive either. The speaker seems sad that life will be over at some point but also sad to be stuck on this mortal coil as well. Acknowledging the mortality of humankind is important, humans are not gods, but so is enjoying life. There is only once chance at living after all.

This preoccupation with death is even the driving force, according to the speaker, behind the poet’s urge to write. “The writer knows / That words live on / Long after he is gone…” And while that may very well be true, what about writing for the living? What’s the point of writing if no one in the here and now is going to get any enjoyment out of it – with the poet being paramount in that enjoyment?

There are many poems in here that, individually, are fantastic like “The Fridge’s Hum”. Morris utilizes the noise of household appliances, that white noise of our lives, to slap reality into his readers. As quickly as the poem begins, it ends just as “The fridges’ hum / And the clock’s tick tock…” will “…One day, / Stop.”

Surrounding this poem with more poems that add on to the inevitable end date of all things does it an injustice. “The Fridge’s Hum” becomes drowned out by the rest of the pieces since many of them focus on the same subject matter.

Another lightning quick piece that is particularly nice is “Catherine Wheel”. It captures so beautifully how vibrant each moment of life is and yet how easily humans move on and forget. “But who in December / Remembers / the fifth of November?” the speaker asks. It is a striking piece.

Morris brings another brilliant, yet curt, poem to life in “Melting Ice”. The speaker makes an interesting connection between “the devil” and global warming. The speaker points out in this piece that the devil is a manifestation of the human collective as is global warming. Evil acts and destruction are the outcomes of human actions, and humans must take responsibility for them before “…yet another ice sheet crumbles.”

Morris has a talent for creating picturesque scenes with incredibly sparse language. If more poems like “Melting Ice” and “Indefinable” populated this collection it would have achieved a balance between life and death. Readers curious to read more of Morris’ work can follow the poet on Twitter or visit his website.

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