Monks Love the Curveball

Adam Jameson was born and raised in Pittsburg Kansas. He is a 1995 graduate of Pittsburg State University with a B.A. in History. He has a varied job history but has spent the last 11 years with Evergy as meter reader and now an Estimator. His work has appeared in Harp, The Little Balkans Review, To the Stars Through Difficulty and Ghost Sign which was named a Kansas Notable Book.  He was recently featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writers Almanac. His poetry collection #9 to Sallisaw was published by The Little Balkans Press. He’s also spent the last 30 years performing with White Buffalo Poetry and Blues. He lives in rural Pittsburg with his wife Mer, son Cole and a bossy Shi Tzu named Scooter. Jameson’s poems make the ordinary sacred.  “Monks Love the Curveball” celebrates his passionate love of family, baseball, work and hunting.  Lyrical and objective, the poems are snapshots of the moment, while celebrating the passage of time. I feel more human, more alive after reading these poems because as a father and former baseball player his vision is universal, a vision I can feel in my bones. J.T. Knoll, Ghost Sign In Adam Jameson’s new work, Monks Love the Curve Ball, this Kansas-seer, native sonexplores the rhythmic and sometimes eccentric serenity of everyday life in his part of the world. We welcome in his life of baseball games, both past and present, earth tilling, splitting wood: “Splitting wood by hand tends to keep the people away,” useful workadays, writing, duck hunting and good dogs. To say baseball is just a metaphor for things like ritual, community and family is almost a disservice. He’s occupying the terrain somewhere between Wendell Berry’s farmer/poet and Jack Spicer’s baseball afficionado/poet, who once wrote: “The pitcher, in his sudden humanness, looks toward the dugout in either agony or triumph.” Adam’s triumph is his language: plain-spoken, passionate and revealing. -John Macker, Author of The Blues Drink Your Dreams Away and Atlas of Wolves. Jameson knows the grit of dirt, the smell of sweat—not only on the baseball field, but also through a long hot day, an endless cold night, off-field. Life’s simple, subtle curveballs are explored in these poems: how to raise kids, cut wheat, order burgers or drinks. The language is plain-style, and the statements direct, but there is also much magic here, like how a homer hit might “rip through night,” accompanied by moths swarming a stadium light. There’s that kind of simple, downhome beauty here—masculine, but not macho, strength without the shove.  --Kevin Rabas, Everyone Just Wants to Drum, Poet Laureate of Kansas, 2017-2019