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The One-Strand River

Poems, 1994-2007

Author Richard Kenney
Ebook
Knopf
On sale Oct 03, 2012 | 192 Pages | 9780307497154
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Fourteen years after his last book of poems, we have a glorious new volume from Richard Kenney, who has been hailed by The New York Review of Books as “one of the most gifted and multifaceted and original of American poets.”

In The One-Strand River, Kenney has tales to tell—of loves, births, and confounding politics—in lively, quicksilver language that surprises at every turn. We meet the poet as a middle-aged husband walking the dog, confiding, “Churlish / thoughts bedevil me, often. Sunshine; girls / half my age; the future; unseen perishing / armies.” He swings between surreal dawn vistas and the unsettling sight of seventh-grade girls circling his teenage son; between the pleasure of a New Year’s celebration “with Nipperkin” and—striking a note that is rare in contemporary poetry—satirical attack, with an eye on the news of the day. A master of many tones, Kenney recalls a nursery rhyme in the title poem—“Gray goose and gander/ How long have we together?”—and ponders the “one-strand river” that is the sea, with its one encircling shore and its tidal pull on both the landscape and the human heart.

Kenney is never a confessional poet, yet we meet a powerful mind here—that of a man who is always responding to provocations seen and unseen, taking pleasure in the possibilities of words themselves, tossing them up into the daily storm of our vexations and our perilous happiness.
THINGSThe scent of soapAs she went byLent me hope;I can’t say why.And the little laughIn the young man’s eyeWas fully halfOf the blue of the sky.Are these things things,Or nothing at all?What’s a thing?What it recalls?• • •ALBA MINE Now night’s abandoned diamond mine’sBeen dynamited open, love.Crickets creak like weakened timbers.Waken now in a vein of love.Love, the slick on the eastern sea’sMeniscus now is red again,Is upward sun’s unbreaking eggBled together and round again.–Again the mountain-crumpled moon’sLosing pressure in the black tree,And now it’s just invisible,And now is breeze in the black tree–A button at your open throat–A button at your loosened sleeve–A kiss crushed and all redAnd roar of the sun in a slipped sleeve.• • •A POT OF TEA Loose leaves in a metal ballOr men in a shark cage steeping,Ideas stain the limpid mindEven while it’s sleeping:Ginseng or the scent of lymphOr consequences queasingInto wide awareness, whence,Like an engine seizingSociety remits a shudderShowing it has feeling,And the divers all have shaving cutsAnd the future’s in Darjeeling–Blind, the brain stem bumps the barsOf the shark cage, meanwhile, feeding,And the tea ball’s cracked, its leaves castTo catastrophic reading:Ideas are too dangerous.My love adjusts an earring.I take her in my arms againAnd think of Hermann Göring,And all liquidities in whichA stain attracts an eating,And of my country’s changing heart,And hell, where the blood is sleeting.
Copyright © 2008 by Richard Kenney. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
© Alan Berner
RICHARD KENNEY was born in Glens Falls, New York, in 1948 and is the author of four previous books of poetry: The Evolution of the Flightless Bird, Orrery, The Invention of the Zero, and The One-Strand River. In 1987 he received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently professor of English at the University of Washington and lives with his family in Port Townsend, Washington. View titles by Richard Kenney

About

Fourteen years after his last book of poems, we have a glorious new volume from Richard Kenney, who has been hailed by The New York Review of Books as “one of the most gifted and multifaceted and original of American poets.”

In The One-Strand River, Kenney has tales to tell—of loves, births, and confounding politics—in lively, quicksilver language that surprises at every turn. We meet the poet as a middle-aged husband walking the dog, confiding, “Churlish / thoughts bedevil me, often. Sunshine; girls / half my age; the future; unseen perishing / armies.” He swings between surreal dawn vistas and the unsettling sight of seventh-grade girls circling his teenage son; between the pleasure of a New Year’s celebration “with Nipperkin” and—striking a note that is rare in contemporary poetry—satirical attack, with an eye on the news of the day. A master of many tones, Kenney recalls a nursery rhyme in the title poem—“Gray goose and gander/ How long have we together?”—and ponders the “one-strand river” that is the sea, with its one encircling shore and its tidal pull on both the landscape and the human heart.

Kenney is never a confessional poet, yet we meet a powerful mind here—that of a man who is always responding to provocations seen and unseen, taking pleasure in the possibilities of words themselves, tossing them up into the daily storm of our vexations and our perilous happiness.

Excerpt

THINGSThe scent of soapAs she went byLent me hope;I can’t say why.And the little laughIn the young man’s eyeWas fully halfOf the blue of the sky.Are these things things,Or nothing at all?What’s a thing?What it recalls?• • •ALBA MINE Now night’s abandoned diamond mine’sBeen dynamited open, love.Crickets creak like weakened timbers.Waken now in a vein of love.Love, the slick on the eastern sea’sMeniscus now is red again,Is upward sun’s unbreaking eggBled together and round again.–Again the mountain-crumpled moon’sLosing pressure in the black tree,And now it’s just invisible,And now is breeze in the black tree–A button at your open throat–A button at your loosened sleeve–A kiss crushed and all redAnd roar of the sun in a slipped sleeve.• • •A POT OF TEA Loose leaves in a metal ballOr men in a shark cage steeping,Ideas stain the limpid mindEven while it’s sleeping:Ginseng or the scent of lymphOr consequences queasingInto wide awareness, whence,Like an engine seizingSociety remits a shudderShowing it has feeling,And the divers all have shaving cutsAnd the future’s in Darjeeling–Blind, the brain stem bumps the barsOf the shark cage, meanwhile, feeding,And the tea ball’s cracked, its leaves castTo catastrophic reading:Ideas are too dangerous.My love adjusts an earring.I take her in my arms againAnd think of Hermann Göring,And all liquidities in whichA stain attracts an eating,And of my country’s changing heart,And hell, where the blood is sleeting.
Copyright © 2008 by Richard Kenney. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author

© Alan Berner
RICHARD KENNEY was born in Glens Falls, New York, in 1948 and is the author of four previous books of poetry: The Evolution of the Flightless Bird, Orrery, The Invention of the Zero, and The One-Strand River. In 1987 he received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently professor of English at the University of Washington and lives with his family in Port Townsend, Washington. View titles by Richard Kenney

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