Ennui Prophet

by Christopher Kennedy

Overview

"Singular and deeply pleasurable. Christopher Kennedy's prosetry is a lonely anarchic nation-state unto itself, half vacation funspot, half eerie purgatorial layover."—Dave Eggers

The poems in Ennui Prophet, Christopher Kennedy's fourth collection, range from deeply personal explorations of relationships with family and friends, to examinations of the political climate in the first decade of the millennium. Whether personal or public, Kennedy gazes through a slightly distorted lens to better see the world around us.

Christopher Kennedy's previous book, Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (BOA Editions Ltd., 2007) received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. He directs Syracuse University's MFA program in creative writing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781934414781
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	06/21/2011
Series:	American Poets Continuum
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	92
File size:	267 KB

About the Author

Christopher Kennedy is the author of three poetry collections, Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (BOA Editions, Ltd.), which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award in 2007; Trouble with the Machine (Low Fidelity Press); and Nietzsche's Horse (Mitki/Mitki Press). His work has appeared in many print and on-line journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, New York Tyrant, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, Slope, Mississippi Review, and McSweeney’s. He is an associate professor of English at Syracuse University where he directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

I.

Searching for Ancestors 2
No Wonder 3
The Fact Remains 4
Dream Horse 5
Congruence 6
Ennui Prophet 7
Transubstantiation 8
Grief Season 9
Ghost in the Land of Skeletons 10
My Mother Listens for Birds 11
Hypoglycemia 12
Orange Sunshine 13
In the White Hour 14
Amish Radio 15

II.

The Rise and Fall of the Middle Class 17
Church of the Holy Abattoir 18
Act V 19
“Wicked Go the Doors” 20
The Year I Was Sick 21
Questions of Metaphysics 22
After Christmas 23
“Are You Looking for the Self Help Section?” 24
Museum of Wrong Turns 25
The Brown Heroin of Love 26
The Day Before My Violin Broke 27
Aloha 28
End of the Ten-Foot Summer 29
Mute Gods in Translation 30
Song of the Elysian Troubadour 31
Here Arrive the Beautiful Women 32
Why 33
Salt City Solo 34

III

Down to the Sea in Sinking Ships 36
“Astronauts Give Up” 37
Stopped by Cops in South Carolina Where the Billboards Shift from Jesus
to Porn and Back Again, I Understand My Affliction 38
One More Roll 39
They Are World Travelers 40
Memo about the Pig Study 41
Still Some Interest in the Heathen Gods 42
Humor Is the Arbiter of Sadness 43
Rasputin’s Folly 44
My Argument with the World, Part 3 45
“Need Some Eyes for Your Next Puppet?” 46
Where Does the Carpathian Highway Roam? 47
For My Students 48
Tombstone Hand 49
The Tyranny of Victory 50
A Vague Memory of Wings 51
The Unimaginable World 52
Rara Avis 53
Mandala 54
Waking Up at the Wheel

Editorial Reviews

Hip and inviting, Kennedy's short prose poems rarely fail to entertain: "I'll buy you a reason to live if you promise to share," one says, while another visits the "Museum of Wrong Turns," finding "something for everyone: cowboy boots worn by former presidents," for example. The language of slightly retro rock and roll ("The next release shall contain no electric guitars") takes over some pages that feel like very short stories, while others run in the sinuous American-surrealist grooves set by, say, Russell Edson: "the bees formed two lines and flew into my ears, where they crowded my head like thoughts of a long drought." Kennedy (Nietzsche's Horse) runs the graduate program in creative writing at Syracuse: this third book of prose poems (his fourth book overall) shows his clear mastery of several prose-poem forms, with lyricism, jokiness ("Amish Radio"), non sequiturs, sadness, and even a bit of cultural criticism to boot. It might be hard to say, in a world choked with prose poems and short-short stories, what sets this particular company apart. And yet that demurral is no knock on the individual poems, such as the one about the "Dream Horse" with the "smaller horse, galloping" inside it. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"…this third book of prose poems (his fourth book overall) shows [Kennedy's] clear mastery of several prose–poem forms, with lyricism, jokiness ("Amish Radio"), non sequiturs, sadness, and even a bit of cultural criticism to boot."
— Publishers Weekly

"It's difficult to find an arrangement of prose poems that seems to work well as a collection, or that extends beyond attempts to define this new and unique genre. Cristopher Kennedy's third collection of prose poetry, Ennui Prophet, is a rare exception to this dilemma. ... In [his] hands, the prose poem is not a linear list of things but a skittish thread running through the narrative line."
— Kenny Tanemura, Sycamore Review

"This is one of the finest collections of prose poetry in a long time, and Kennedy is the poet to read to find out where this popular form is going." — Rain Taxi

"Can one have too much fun writing a poem? I imagine Kennedy offering the reader an enthusiastic high-five at the end of this one. Yet, humor turns to horror as we are finally forced to recognize ourselves in Kennedy's paralyzed 'Ennui Prophet' who can no longer distinguish a 'scream forming' from 'a yawn.' Kennedy's work delights in such ambiguity and also finds ways to keep speaking through its sleepy screams." — KR Online

From the Publisher