In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: New and Selected Poems, 1955-2007

by X. J. Kennedy

Overview

2008 American Library Association Notable Book in Poetry

For more than half a century, readers and listeners have taken special pleasure in the poetry of X. J. Kennedy. In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus is an ample gathering of his best work: memorable songs, startling lyrics, poems that tell poignant stories, character studies that vie with those of Edwin Arlington Robinson. A master of verbal music, Kennedy has long been praised for his wit and humor; as this collection reveals, many of his poems also reach surprising depths and heights. Donald Hall comments, "many of Kennedy's poems are wit itself. His wit is his way of understanding. No one else writing is capable of the effects in which Kennedy specializes."

This book skims the cream from several slim volumes and six past collections including the prize-winning Nude Descending a Staircase, Cross Ties, and The Lords of Misrule. It restores to print over fifty poems unavailable for decades and adds more than two dozen new poems collected for the first time. Kennedy has long occupied a unique place in American poetry; In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus now offers the first comprehensive collection to span his entire career.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801896354
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2007
Series:	Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

X. J. Kennedy has written poetry, children's verse, and fiction as well as textbooks on writing and literature. Before becoming a full-time writer, he taught at the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina–Greensboro, Tufts University, Wellesley College, the University of California–Irvine, and Leeds University. He now lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with his wife and sometime coauthor, Dorothy M. Kennedy.

Table of Contents

Nude Descending a Staircase (1961)
First Confession
Solitary Confinement
On a Child Who Lived One Minute
Faces from a Bestiary
Nude Descending a Staircase
The Autumn in Norfolk Shipyard
Warning to Sculptors
Lewis Carroll
In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day
Barking Dog Blues
Inscriptions after Fact
Lilith
The Sirens
Narcissus Suitor
Theater of Dionysus
At the Stoplight by the Paupers' Graves
Little Elegy
Ladies Looking for Lice
B Negative
At Ghostwriter's Deathbed
Rondel
One a.m. with Voices
Growing into Love
Cross Ties
Poets
Nothing in Heaven Functions as It Ought
Traveler's Warnings
Main Road West
Edgar's Story
National Shrine
Peace and Plenty
Driving Cross-Country
Reading Trip
Requiem in Hoboken
For a Maiden Lady
Pottery Class
Absentminded Bartender
Loose Woman
Ant Trap
West Somerville, Mass.
Day Seven
The Ascent
Golgotha
Ode
Two Apparitions
Artificer
Daughter in the House
The Shorter View
Giving in to You
Slim Volumes
Breaking and Entering
Song: Great Chain of Being
Consumer's Report
The Atheist's Stigma
In a Secret Field
Emily Dickinson in Southern California (1973)
Mining Town
Schizophrenic Girl
Evening Tide
A Little Night Music
Celebrations After the Death of John Brennan (1974)
Three Tenors, One Vehicle (1975)
Talking Dust Bowl Blues
Song to the Tune of "Somebody Stole My Gal"
Cross Ties: Selected Poems (1985)
In a Dry Season
A Footpath Near Gethsemane
Dirty English Potatoes
Goblet
Aunt Rectita's Good Friday
Hangover Mass
One-night Homecoming
October
Joshua
Old Men Pitching Horseshoes
To Dorothy on Her Exclusion from The Guinness Book of World Records
At the Last Rites for Two Hotrodders
Flitting Flies
The Death of Professor Backwards
At Brown Crane Pavilion
On the Proposed Seizure of Twelve Graves in a Colonial Cemetery
A Beardsley Moment
Dark Horses (1992)
The Arm
Twelve Dead, Hundreds Homeless
The Waterbury Cross
Veterinarian
The Animals You Eat
Snug
Overnight Pass
Two from Guillaume Apollinaire
Pont Mirabeau
Churchbells
To the Writers Forbidden to Write
Terse Elegy for J. V. Cunningham
On Being Accused of Wit
Emily Dickinson Leaves a Message to the World Now that Her Homestead in Amherst Has an Answering Machine
The Withdrawn Gift
On the Square
Dump
Summer Children
Tableau Intime
Finis
Black Velvet Art
The Lords of Misrule (2002)
"The Purpose of Time Is to Prevent Everything from Happening at Once"
Jimmy Harlow
Naomi Trimmer
Five-and-Dime, Late Thirties
Sailors with the Clap
For Allen Ginsberg
Thebes: In the Robber Village
Close Call
Street Moths
Décor
The Ballad of Fenimore Woolson and Henry James
A Scandal in the Suburbs
To His Lover, That She Be Not Overdressed
The Blessing of the Bikes
Sharing the Score
A Curse on a Thief
Pie
Shriveled Meditation
Meditation in the Bedroom of General Francisco Franco
Maples in January
September Twelfth, 2001
New Poems
Panic in the Carwash
At Paestum
Rites
Small House Torn Down To Build a Larger
Uncertain Burial
Innocent Times
Epiphany
Furnished Rental
Brotherhood
Death of a Window Washer
Pacifier
Geometry
Silent Cell Phones
Fireflies
Mrs. Filbert's Golden Quarters
Jerry Christmas
Poor People in Church
Sonnet Beginning with a Line and a Half Abandoned by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
God's Obsequies
Storehouse
At the Antiques Fair
Secret River
Command Decision
Bald Eagle
Meeting a Friend Again After Thirty Years
Finding a Tintype
Out of Tune with the Stars
Envoi
Notes
Index of Titles and First Lines

Editorial Reviews

A splendid volume . . . It is impossible not to think that his work will grow in estimation with each passing year.
—Booklist

Kennedy is both a conceptualizer and a musician . . . the transformative element in Kennedy's creative process is the exactitude of his craft.
—Donald Junkins, North Dakota Quarterly

To us, Kennedy is the best of the best.
—RALPH: Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy, and the Humanities

A worthy heir . . . to the indispensably impertinent likes of Catullus amd Dean Swift—cheerfully serving notice that there's still nothing like an artfully pithy piece of verse for making short work of killjoys.
—David Barber, Boston Globe

X. J. Kennedy? He ought to be declared a national resource and excused from taxation.
—Wyatt Prunty, Weekly Standard

The high quality, abundance, and breadth of his writing—poetry, children's work, fiction, textbooks—and hislong presence on the literary scene make him one of the most important American poets today.
—Catherine Savage Brosman, Chronicles

From the Publisher

A worthy heir . . . to the indispensably impertinent likes of Catullus amd Dean Swift—cheerfully serving notice that there's still nothing like an artfully pithy piece of verse for making short work of killjoys.

Boston Globe - David Barber

A splendid volume . . . It is impossible not to think that his work will grow in estimation with each passing year.

Booklist

X. J. Kennedy? He ought to be declared a national resource and excused from taxation.

Weekly Standard - Wyatt Prunty

To us, Kennedy is the best of the best.

RALPH: Review of Arts

The high quality, abundance, and breadth of his writing—poetry, children's work, fiction, textbooks—and hislong presence on the literary scene make him one of the most important American poets today.

Chronicles - Catherine Savage Brosman

Kennedy is both a conceptualizer and a musician . . . the transformative element in Kennedy's creative process is the exactitude of his craft.

North Dakota Quarterly - Donald Junkins

"A splendid volume... It is impossible not to think that his work will grow in estimation with each passing year."

Booklist

"To us, Kennedy is the best of the best."

RALPH: Review of Arts

The high quality, abundance, and breadth of his writing—poetry, children's work, fiction, textbooks—and hislong presence on the literary scene make him one of the most important American poets today.

— Catherine Savage Brosman

Chronicles

X. J. Kennedy? He ought to be declared a national resource and excused from taxation.

— Wyatt Prunty

Weekly Standard

A worthy heir... to the indispensably impertinent likes of Catullus amd Dean Swift—cheerfully serving notice that there's still nothing like an artfully pithy piece of verse for making short work of killjoys.

— David Barber

Boston Globe

Kennedy is both a conceptualizer and a musician... the transformative element in Kennedy's creative process is the exactitude of his craft.

— Donald Junkins

North Dakota Quarterly