Reviews
Here, in Kennedy's signature combination of storytelling, formal nimbleness, and comic moments mixed with reverie and melancholy, we find the poet assessing the past and looking out on a future beyond his own lifetime.
Typical of Kennedy’s versatility and willingness to defy poetic expectations...
Now eighty-six, we should all hope Kennedy amends this closing prayer, and asks the Lord to let him produce quality work well into his nineties.
These are beautiful poems by one of the best poets we have.
For over forty years, technical virtuoso X. J. Kennedy has entertained readers with tightly constructed formal poems in colloquial language. [Kennedy] makes us understand why our world drives us to song.
Mordant, funny, and even sometimes rather frightening; the poet, so much in control of his formal means, seems himself rather dismayed by the fearful things he points to.
Well, here he goes again, America's finest formalist, with a simply delightful collection of new poems.
Kennedy's 'wit' is not mere cleverness. Rather it combines accuracy of perception with the metaphoric imagination that, with his ability to juggle fixed forms, enlivens the best poems in this satisfying collection.
X. J. Kennedy? He ought to be declared a national resource and excused from taxation.
Kennedy's work remains cultured, likable, and witty.
Book Details
1. Recollections
2. Saints and Others
3. Versions
4 Diversions
5. Easters
6. Last Acts
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author