The President of Earth

"The President of Earth" gathers the best and most exciting of David Kennedy's poetry from the mid-1980s onwards. Ranging from graceful, evocative lyrics and mysterious dream-like narratives through alert cultural observations and hilariously inventive cut-ups, Kennedy's work explores poetry as way of behaving in language that is also a way of behaving in the world. "The President of Earth" is divided into three sections. 'Histories' gathers new and selected poems to represent the full range of Kennedy's concerns: the city and the consumer, home and the world, England and Englishness, past dreams of the future, the modern experience of living inside accelerated change, and the consequences of the collapse of hierarchies of meaning. 'Cities' offers further explorations of that collapse and its consequences with a sequence of cut-up sonnets that revel in the energies generated by collisions between diction and content. The book culminates with a long extract from 'Gardens', an ambitious sequence-in-progress which uses a range of historical and contemporary voices to explore the garden as a repository of cultural meanings. Reviewing the book in "Poetry Review", Simon Jenner noted that the poetry is characterised by 'an aleatory dream narrative, an associative richness' and concluded: 'The openings draw one in but ...the journey, as in Cavafy's 'Ithika' is all. One arrives at the end of his poems ...entranced'.

ISBN 1876857102   Pages 132 ISBN13 9781876857103 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Salt Publishing   Weight (grammes) 177 Imprint Salt Publishing   Published in Applecross, WA Format Paperback   Series title Salt Modern Poets S. Publication date 04 Jul 2002   Height (mm) 216 Non-book description Perfect bound   Width (mm) 140 DEWEY 821.914   Spine width (mm) 7 DEWEY edition DC21   Academic level General

Part I: Histories The President of Earth The Lime Blossom Tree One For The Book Of Love Sundays Under The Trees Juliette Greco Walks The Streets A Walking Lunch Lunch Dream Postmodern Scenes Naphtha (Revisited) The Future Suburban For Beginners Riverhampton Terrace In-Flight Entertainment Things To Do With Light and Motion Agrapha What Pefkos Said Meltemi Blues Cork Tiles Song Two Dreams The Horn by The Sea The Guitar The Fountain Horse Chestnut England Semper Eadem Remembering The Future Father And Son Letter from a Man Minority & Weird A Meat Lamp for Helen Chadwick The Art of Poetry Part II: Cities Any Turkish Bath The Well-Buttressed Maid The Buddhist Way The Great Antistrophe The Great Sal Zedo Holly Rochelle's Smile Sabrina Fair Soda With Persephone Soche, Mzuzu, Nametiti Descending A Glass Staircase Life: The Musical Kitsch and Kunst Cities That Noble Brother To The Lute 100 Years Of Cinema From The Floating Islands An Inexplicable Incident The Raindrop Prelude The Age Dan Leonard / Passing The Key Pavanne For A Dead Symbology A Philosopher Suddenly Apprehending God A Love Poem The Lost Semesters Empathy And Spring A Cafe At The End Of The Century Notes For A Plain Tale Those We Loved Falling Backwards Into The Night Fifty-Fifty The New Life The Last Romantics At The Cafe Cleopatra The Future A Song About Entry La Belle Captive Part III: Gardens

He has an obvious lyric talent and the poems are often artfully underwritten; they have an oddly shifted sense of perspective, perhaps with just a dash of [ ... ] New York hot sauce -- Tony Frazer Shearsman Kennedy offers an unblinking poetics free of specious closure [ ... ] The journey, as in Cavafy's 'Ithika', is all. One arrives at the end of his poems [ ... ] entranced. -- Simon Jenner Poetry Review Kennedy's poetry is full of quirky argumentation and aleatory charm: 'A Walking Lunch', 'What Pefkos Said' and 'Horse Chestnut' are all fine and more than fine poems. Metre Kennedy has a painterly eye. He has an almost loving concern for "things' and 'objects' in their variousness and palpability ... Prop The influence of the New York School is unmistakeable ... mingled with his wry self-deprecating humour ... Wonderfully understated Blade

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