title: Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained
author:  August Kleinzahler 
description: In these nine autobiographical essays, most of which first appeared in the <i>London Review of Books</i>, poet Kleinzahler (<i>A Calendar of Airs</i>, etc.) writes from the perspective that an "unfriendly room" is a "sanctuary." Kleinzahler was the youngest of three children growing up in a Mafia-ridden New Jersey neighborhood in the 1950s. His father had an "unpredictable disposition" and his mother "didn't like children, least of all her own"; thus young Augie was raised, "in lieu of parents," by the family dog. Such challenging beginnings have forged a complex voice, both bitter ("The entire nation sucking from the same teat, a teat with a Nike swoosh and dripping Diet Coke") and lyrically meditative ("the morning's first streetcar comes out of the tunnel before dawn... this is my rough carillon"). A few of the book's early essays wander, failing to strike a balance between topic and tone, but Kleinzahler saves his strongest essays for the end. In "Eros &amp; Poetry," he uses stunning examples, from Chaucer to Dylan Thomas, to prove how love and passion "awaken us to the pulse of poetry and dance...." And the final, eponymous piece is a moving elegy to Kleinzahler's older brother, a gambling homosexual gangster, who, in the 1970s, shared his secret life with the author as if to gain witness toand recordhis brief but extraordinary life. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  * * *
  
  Deep Down
  
  
  CHAPTER ONE. BEGINS THE STORY WITH A PECULIAR
  
  
  MEETING.
  
  CHAPTER TWO. SHOWS WHAT ASTONISHING RESULTS MAY
  
  
  FOLLOW FROM TAKING THE WRONG ROAD.
  
  CHAPTER THREE. INTRODUCES A FEW MORE CHARACTERS AND
  
  
  HOMELY INCIDENTS.
  
  CHAPTER FOUR. AT WORK UNDER THE SEA.
  
  CHAPTER FIVE. DESCRIBES A WRECK AND SOME OF ITS
  
  
  CONSEQUENCES.
  
  CHAPTER SIX. TREATS OF THE MINER'S COTTAGE, WORK,
  
  
  AND COSTUME.
  
  [CHAPTER SEVEN. TELLS OF THE GREAT MINE AND OF A
  
  
  ROYAL DIVE UNDER THE SEA.
  
  [CHAPTER EIGHT. DOWN, DOWN,
  DOWN.](Deep%20Down%3b%20a%20Tale%20of%20the%20Cornis_split_001.html#filepos135101)
  
  [CHAPTER NINE. TREATS OF DIFFICULTIES TO BE
  
  
  OVERCOME.
  
  [CHAPTER TEN. SHOWS HOW MAGGOT MADE A DESPERATE
  
  
  VENTURE, AND WHAT FLOWED FROM IT.
  
  [CHAPTER ELEVEN. SHOWS THAT MUSIC HATH CHARMS, AND
  
  
  ALSO THAT IT SOMETIMES HAS DISADVANTAGES.
  
  [CHAPTER TWELVE. IN WHICH OLIVER GETS “A FALL,” AND
  
  
  SEES SOME OF THE SHADOWS OF THE MINER'S LIFE.
  
  [CHAPTER THIRTEEN. T