One of Publishers Weekly's Most Anticipated Poetry Books for Spring 2023 Metamorphoses springs from Ovid's epic poem to explore the slipperiness of identity, its propensity for change and transience. In poems that shift registers from travelogue to elegy, from nature documentary to a simple record of the realities of daily life,&nbsp; Evan Kennedy focuses on transformation, personal and collective, in an empire in decline, in a world transfigured by ecological upheaval. With a range of reference from Roman household Gods to San Francisco poetic titans to musical celebrities like Madonna and Bob Dylan, Metamorphoses confronts change as an inevitable molecular process.&nbsp;

Metamorphoses: City Lights Spotlight No. 22

Literature & Fiction

Kennedy, Evan

Poetry

City Lights Publishers

Poetry. "SHOO-INS TO RUIN is actually five essential experiments in one volume. Our language is put to work in a variety of ways. It is fossilized and piled up, or it dashes ahead driven by romance as in the Knight Scenes, 'a lasting indentation on the air' where the poet assumes the form of a crusader talking to himself, passing through an epic, ever changing landscape. Evan Kennedy's phrasing is bound to be imitated. Only by aligning certain words together do we ever truly hear them on their own. I am reminded of the most obscure Stein (Painted Lace), Rimbaud, Herrick, Coolidge and Basil Bunting's Briggflatts&mdash;sheet music that makes my blood run clear! He is writing out of his mind, where even cast off lines have their own pull and rhyme."&mdash;Cedar Sigo "Think of him as a circus Beckett or a Beckett circus or an early Dylan of the early twenty-first century."&mdash;Lisa Jarnot

Shoo-Ins to Ruin

Gold Wake Press

Poetry. LGBT Studies. "Composed on bicycular excursions through San Francisco, Evan Kennedy's THE SISSIES aims to 'be subjugated' and speak as animal—wolf, ox, sheep, donkey. A ballpark seagull settling on the Giants' outfield. The casual, mannered pun on St. Francis of Assisi (patron saint of the city and of animals) and 'a sissy' undergirds Kennedy's argument against the 'crummy superiority' of humans, and for the 'dissolution of animal taxonomy.' The speaker strives toward, but does not reach, a creaturely transfiguration: 'when I say wolf I mean something else I want to reach,' a horizon continually vanishing. Amid echoes of the medieval argument against homosexuality as 'contrary to kynde' or against nature, Kennedy suggests that our species-exclusivity (homo, human) is our apparent peril—'we have only kept identical to ourselves.' Like the troubadour's desire for another's spouse, by definition unobtainable, or the longing for one's creator and that- other-shore, these poems bray and graze toward a fuller empathy with creatures, a beatific meekness in the face of queer-bashing, where the body can be 'stilled as meat.'"—Julian Talamantez Brolaski "THE SISSIES sings the body stigmatic (pummeled, benevolent, maligned) though it knows better than to hold out for unearthly transcendence. As a peer, I am envious and relieved to read poetry that is bare-chested, electric, and rare in its merger of poetic intuition with rigorous thought. 'Let me speak as no one's captive,' Kennedy writes, unfettered by trend or pretense. This book makes me believe in our vocation again."—Corrine Fitzpatrick "The triple body of the text, like any sanctified uni-trinity worthy the name, 'perform[s] a superhuman etiquette toward the rest of creation.' Here the trinity is queer/poet/urban cyclist whose body speeds with nervy fragility across cityscapes of bursting apotheosis. The body and its relinquishment, never- ending sources of mystical wonder, occasion subjective transcendence according to a cyclical template: that of the praise song, especially St. Francis of Assisi's famous prayer, paying pan-theistic tribute to all elements of creation, from the cockroach to the dog-masked boys that litter the uni-trinity of his life, which, like his body, his mind and his text, are an exhilarating eco-system, a linguistic 'wildlife sanctuary.'"—Maria Damon

The Sissies

Futurepoem Books

Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. California Interest. I AM, AM I, TO TRUST THE JOY THAT JOY IS NO MORE OR LESS THERE NOW THAN BEFORE is a subtractive memoir, removing particulars such as time and place to reveal the operations of a spirit and the body it animates. Short lyric essays meditate on routines and habits, as well as elusive pleasures like reading and travel. These topics serve as prompts for exercises of attention and examination of its lapses. Deeper into the book, the speaker's anatomy is pared away, resulting in a voice engaged in direct address, attempting devotion.

I am, am I, to trust the joy that joy is no more or less there now than

Essays & Correspondence

Roof Books

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Books by Kennedy, Evan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kennedy, Evan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Metamorphoses: City Lights Spotlight No. 22

Shoo-Ins to Ruin

The Sissies

I am, am I, to trust the joy that joy is no more or less there now than