Contemporary Poetry Review (2006)
by Kathleen Rooney, from "Sell Outs and Stanzas: The Rockstar as Poet"
. . . The poetry of Damon Krukowski, on the other hand, while it yields a similar argument, hardly ever misses. In the interest of full-disclosure, I should confess that, although I listen to and enjoy the music of all the other artists reviewed here (even Corgan), I have never paid much attention to Galaxie 500, nor have I ever even heard, to my knowledge, Damon & Naomi or Magic Hour, Krukowski's other musical projects. Thus, I didn't know what to expect of his first and only full-length collection The Memory Theatre Burned. Reading it, however, I wanted to get my hands on both the chapbook, 5000 Musical Terms, which preceded it, and the back catalogues of all his band's records. Divided into two sections, "The Memory Theatre Burned" and "Vexations," Krukowski's book of prose poems unfolds its fables in the spare, simple language of allegory, trying to reveal essential human truths, while buckling continually, absurdly, deliberately under the weight of such a task.

In "The Envelope," for instance, he writes ingeniously of the genesis of this familiar household item, while at the same time exploring issues of audience and the compulsion to write:

The envelope was an unprecedented invention; for in those days nothing was hidden from view, the occult was as yet unborn, even metaphors of obstruction and enclosure were unknown. It is true that people wore clothes, but they did not carry wallets-and the letters they wrote were transported by hand, out in the open, from place to place. 

Meanwhile, "The Secret Museum" begins with an imaginative leap that illustrates the seemingly effortless dream logic that underlies many of his poems: "The horn on the Victrola looked inviting, so I jumped inside." This fabulistic tone, this recounting of fantastic tales in a strange, yet matter-of-fact fashion puts one in mind of Calvino's classic Invisible Cities, yet The Memory Theater Burned never seems overly derivative of any of its antecedents, and stands as a funny, meditative, critical and original work in its own right.

Antioch Review (Fall 2005, v 63 no 4)
by F.D. Reeve
Singer and recording artist, editor at Exact Change publishers, Krukowski has burst forth with his own poems, a sunny fistful of bright, brassy prose poems that gallop across the meadows and bridges of life. A review shouldn't go metaphoric all at once. But distilled metaphor is what's here: after the memory theater burned, the poet say, only fragments remained, and "I cannot recall these pieces without supplying connective elements; . . . fragments are all I find, what I find is all I can remember." "Irrationality," he says, which "mirrors our individual souls . . . is the only possible material for poetry." "The horn on the Victrola looked inviting, so I jumped inside." "The envelope was an unprecedented invention; for in those days nothing was hidden from view." "You have been under water a long time." You see what amiable conversations the poems suggest? Picture yourself sitting comfortably at a table, cool glass before you; in the chair beside you is a book looking vaguely like Damon Krukowski, each time you turn a page the words speak out, sounding his thoughts precisely (both first and second thoughts), even his feelings; so finally you have a whole figure there, a composite attitude toward the world and writing about it. There the two of you are, having a thoroughly entertaining time. Easy for you to agree with Rosmarie Waldrop's blurb that the poems make "our daily predicaments seem both funny and sad, but always marvelous."

The Village Voice (November 30th, 2004)
by Jori Finkel
When Blake split the world in half, pitting Songs of Innocence against Songs of Experience, he gave all the good lines to the voice of age. So it's a compliment in the best Romantic sense to say that Damon Krukowski in The Memory Theater Burned sounds like an old man. Krukowski fills this small volume of prose poems with nostalgia, amnesia, sleeplessness, suicide, wills, and even ghosts who drop by his house for a smoke. One of them even still has his tattoos.

You can laugh at the absurdity, but the key is clearly minor. The tone is ennui. (Baudelaire invented the prose poem, they say, when he was tired of poetry.) In the opener, a man digs a trench large enough to encompass his entire world. Later, a writer exhausts his one and only thought, which is that he has no private thoughts. Singers try to sing past the point of inspiration and musicians become their instruments—like the bassist who sinks under the weight of his guitar, entering a world heard about in "myth and song."

Some of this verges on brittle, Calvino-style cleverness, but there is one strong redeeming feature. As a musician himself, best known as the drummer of Galaxie 500, Krukowski makes the image of singing—surely one of poetry's great clichés since Virgil's time—mean something again. If anyone has the right to talk about the singer living to sing, or singing to live, Krukowski does. And when you hear the notes of personal history over the drone of allegory, the music will move you.

Rain Taxi (Winter 2004)
by Chris Stroffolino
When thinking about the rock star as poet phenomenon, one may notice that, in contrast to the Leonard Cohens and Patti Smiths of previous generations (who were known as poets before they became rock musicians), many of the names tossed around today first achieved their notoriety as musicians and songwriters: Jewel, Jeff Tweedy, Billy Corgan, David Berman, and Damon Krukowski all fit this pattern. Berman and Krukowski are probably the least known of these musician/poets, yet they are also the best of bunch, because neither of them uses poetry as merely a spillover of the stray thoughts and feelings that they couldn't shape into the rigors the art form of the song demands. It may, in fact, be an irrelevant consideration to bring up the fact that Krukowski has been on the music scene for almost 20 years when considering his first book of prose poems, so strongly do they hold up on their own right.

This is not to say that fans of Galaxie 500, Magic Hour, and/or Damon and Naomi will not find some insights into one of the people behind the music in this book, but they should also be warned: Krukowski's seeming confessional meditative mode in many of these pieces may not be as autobiographical as it at first seems. Not that Krukowski is a mere "trickster," but the trickster does make his appearance along with "the singer, the teller of tales, and the neurotic on the couch." So even though he draws on the experience of his years as a professional singer, songwriter, and musician for quite a few of the pieces in this book, they are almost always tempered with a knowledge of language's artifice and thus never become self-indulgent. Rather, the writer's attitude to writing, singing, or performing becomes a medium through which the reader (even if not a musician herself) may grapple with basic, eternal, questions about identity and one's place in society and the cosmos.

For instance, in "Song Without Words," the speaker recounts (or fabricates) his progression from being a proficient instrumentalist (which instrument is never mentioned) to becoming a vocalist:

But as I sang, I began to think of the words I was singing--these were simple words, both sad and happy ones I had picked up from different lullabies or folksongs I remembered hearing in childhood. The words, though simple, began to affect me. I thought about them more and more often, and they began to take on greater import than I had at first realized.

The danger that Krukowski speaks of here--how words can author the author--may have specific biographical relevance, but more generally points to the danger anyone who has learned to speak must navigate. Likewise, in "Raree Show," Krukowski undercuts the Freudian creation myth by employing imagination in the service of theatre. The speaker is "a prompter at our national theater. It would be a good job, if the principal Actor and actress were not my parents--They are our nation's greatest actor and actress Because they love the audience more than they love one another, me, or even themselves." This might be the beginning of a tragedy, and certainly there's something dysfunctional about this dynamic; the speaker is reduced to the role of the prompter, a kind of "mute" or "copyist" (which, not accidentally, are the titles of other pieces in this collection). But there is a potentially liberating paradox here--for just as "Song Without Words" could be said to be, on a literal level at least, not a song and made of nothing but words, the speaker of "Raree Show," though presented as helpless to change the predetermined repertoire of "our national theatre," is perhaps able to alter our perception of the family by presenting it as high public farce.

"At The Café Detroit," sounds like it could be spoken by a Dylan, sick of telling his audience "you shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you." "A Testimonial," "Vexations," and "Bells" are excellent accounts of the impetus to become a songwriter and singer respectively, and the struggles to translate feeling into art (which, yes, is made more poignant if one happens to have a Damon and Naomi record on in the background while reading it). "Bells" in particular is a tour de force, offering a metaphorical linkage of the cosmos with a radio. There are also some shorter but less risky pieces in this collection (e.g. "Venus and Neptune," "My Life As The History Of A Town") which vary the tone and help the book move along. Other pieces, like "The Envelope," can be read as an account of the "fall" from a prelapsarian, more communally trusting time.

Throughout Krukowski is very adept at showing the possibilities an "I"-based poetry (even with an unreliable narrator) may still have for social critique in the broadest sense, but often his greatest strengths are evident in the shorter pieces, like "The Secret Museum," in which the speaker (a personified sound) squeezes himself into the horn of a victrola and is transfigured between beats. Here, rather than lamenting the constrictions of "the envelope," the speaker embraces the former confines of his art, whether musical or lyrical.

It may seem odd that Krukowski ends this book with a piece called "Poetry." Why would he put such weight on this idea?

Irrationality, by contrast mirrors our individual souls. In it we recognize ourselves, but never our friends, relations, or neighbors--it therefore makes poor material for religions and songs--and is the only possible material for poetry.

The distinction between religion and poetry is well-rehearsed enough to be easily grasped, but the implication that songs are more like religions than poetry is more novel and gives one pause. Is this distinction true in general, or just for Krukowski himself? One could write an entire book, or perhaps an album, that explores it further.

Giant Robot
by Eric Nakamura
This is a new book of prose poetry by Damon Krukowski of Damon & Naomi and Galaxie 500 fame. It isn't rhyming hip hop or spoken word; it's more like short stories told through allegory and imagery. For my short attention span, this is perfect. Each piece is from a half page to a few pages long. Some of the work is dark and weird, but at the same time, Damon's weirdness will make you smile.

Flaunt
by Britt Brown
"A Paris Spleen-ish book of poignant prose poems . . . They're smart, strange, deft, and dudical. Like dream-fables for sonic youth." -

Cosmik Debris
by Erick Mertz
Were I the king of poetry, I'd decree that all tomes of verse come in pocket size. That way, we'd be all be able to pull out our favorites and quote them to each other on the streets or in barrooms, on the off chance anyone would listen. No one would discriminate. We'd shout TS Eliot over the television news that prevails over our lives like white noise.

Of course, I'm not the king of poetry and my decrees need be much simpler. Bringing it back another step, I'm not quite sure I'd want to read the poems I enjoy to everyone. My favorite poems become in small ways mine, even if someone else is writing them for me to read. A 'someone' like Damon Krukowski is writing that type of frighteningly private poem now.

Yet his book The Memory Theater Burned is practically pocket sized.

Damon Krukowski is the Damon of Damon and Naomi, and former member of seminal rock band Galaxie 500. His debut book of poems speaks of all sorts of ruins; ruined memories, old buildings out of function, the places people fail. He isn't afraid to in his collection of prose poems decide what has abandoned him and what he's chosen to forget for whatever reason.

Does this description sound elusive? Good, because misleading anyone that Krukowski's deceptively simple style is, well, simple would be a travesty. Krukowski conjures images up with his deliberate style that as quick as his readers grasp a hold of, he evaporates. He does so throughout the book, no more evident than in "Ghosts" where he begrudges six ghosts lodging with him. They smoke, they play loud music and all the while, the image of the peeved and ponderous mortal seems clear. But these ghosts are Krukowski's friends, and in the end, the poet states: "It was difficult having six smoking ghosts in my house, but when they left, I told them: next time, please bring more." Krukowski is filled with ghosts - his poems teeming with those he's chasing away and others who he's begging for another moment and often times, these vespers come in the same stanza.

Perhaps The Memory Theater Burned is pocket sized because it practically begs repeat reads. It is bus stop, coffee table poetry ponderous enough in its simplicity to make for conversation starter and koan for meditation. Krukowski is onto something, and is delivering it with devastating style. Poems like his are far too private to keep hidden; at the same time, much more public than could ever be offered up for conspicuous consumption.