BY KENNY TANEMURA

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. Christopher Kennedy’s third collection of prose poetry, Ennui Prophet, is a rare exception to this dilemma.

In Christopher Kennedy’s hands, the prose poem is not a linear list of things but a skittish thread running through the narrative line. The second paragraph of “Museum of Wrong Turns” introduces a “roommate who thought Mr. Rushmore was a natural phenomenon.” The third and final paragraph begins with an “expensive vehicle” and ends with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. These prose poems have more in common with the contemporary American poems being written today than they do with the prose poems written a generation ago by poets as diverse as Charles Simic, …MORE

BY DAVID BLOMENBERG

An old school teacher I didn’t know well retired and died in a small town south of here.  He was loved by his gradeschool students and many children.  He had a loving wife who died later on.  In sorting through the house a box of documents was discovered that his wife perhaps didn’t know about.  Perhaps she did.

The box was filled with letters and poems the teacher wrote.  The box revealed he had an earlier wife, married at the height of young love.  She died suddenly while she was still beautiful.  The poems he wrote were to her, each one a variation on loss, like messages on voicemail:  Why do you not answer?  When can I see you again? Outwardly, he was happily married to his second wife, who grew old with him …MORE