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Media Credit: Angeli Bueno Poet Richard Kenney was the guest at the semester's last Writing Seminars reading.

Poet Robert Kenney was introduced to a sizable audience in Remsen Hall as a difficult but rewarding poet. His newest work, a collection of poetry titled The One Strand River, is a "puzzle," but one that is apparently worth deciphering. In fact, Mr. Kenney was so glowingly brought before the crowd that one would think the intent was sarcastic.

This was certainly not the intention of the Writing Seminars, to introduce their guest so inadvertently comically, but that was unfortunately the outcome. It seemed just too quaint to be serious.

Once Kenney began to speak, however, the rocky start was quickly forgotten. The well-known author is a MacArthur Fellow and a professor at the University of Washington. His first collection of poetry, The Evolution of the Flightless Bird, was selected from over 500 entries to win the 1983 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. Although initially recognized for accessibility, Kenney's last work, The Invention of the Zero, was criticized as being anything but.

The poet himself has voiced his understanding of such negative responses. With this new collection, Kenney proves that he is not only back to form but also that his work is better than ever.

Kenney calls his newest work a "chimera," in that it had "warm blooded sections and reptilian sections." That is, some of the fare contained in River is lighthearted and friendly.

For example, a large section of the work is dedicated to poems about love and lust. One poem, titled "No," employs the controlling metaphor of a dugout canoe as a sexual vessel; it has a "frictionless glide" and its passengers are constantly "slapping" insects on their arms. Another, "Grasshopper," is a traditional yet wholly original Indian summer poem.

On the other hand, not all is rainbows and butterflies; much of Mr. Kenney's new book is satirical, cold and sharp. One particularly biting take on flying first class ends with the phrase, "Unless the pilot misspoke himself/it's not about headphones and Coke." Another poem finishes with "Wouldn't it be grand if there weren't too many people in the world/and I was one of them," a very funny and cynical way to cap off a piece of poetry.

These examples highlight a stylistic trait of Kenney: He usually ends his poems with abrupt, short quips that are often satirical or critical and always clever. His pieces of poetry build up until they reach a climax, then end with a phrase. They left the audience either in laughter or puzzlement, but in any case, their usage was effective.

Continued...

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