Poetry Magazine, Feature Poet: X. J. Kennedy, February 2003

Poetry Magazine

X. J. Kennedy

USA

X. J. Kennedy (known to his friends as Joe) was born in Dover, N. J., on August 21, 1929, shortly   before the crash of the stock market. Irked by the hardship of having the name of Joseph Kennedy, he stuck the X on and has been stuck with it ever since. Kennedy grew up in Dover, went to Seton Hall (B.Sc. '50) and Columbia (M.A., '51), then   spent four years in the Navy as an enlisted journalist, serving aboard destroyers. He studied at the Sorbonne in 1955-56, then devoted the next six years to failing to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. But he did meet Dorothy there.

He has taught English at Michigan, at the Woman's College of the U. of North Carolina (now UNC Greensboro), and from 1963 through 1978 at Tufts, with visiting sojourns at Wellesley, U. of California Irvine, and the U. of Leeds. In 1978, he became a free-lance writer.

Recognitions include the Lamont Award of the Academy of American Poets (for his first book, Nude Descending a Staircase in 1961), the Los Angeles Book Award for poetry, the Aiken-Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry (given by the University of the South and The Sewanee Review), Guggenheim and National Arts Council fellowships, the first Michael Braude Award for light verse (given by the American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters to a poet of any nation), the Shelley Memorial Award, the Golden Rose of the New England Poetry Club, honorary degrees from Lawrence and Adelphi universities, and Westfield State College, and the National Council of Teachers of English Year 2000 Award for Excellence in Children's Poetry.

The Kennedys have five grown children and four grandchildren. They now live in Lexington, Mass., in a house half century-old and half new.

                  FOR MORE DETAILS . . .

                  On XJK, please see current editions of Who's Who in America or Who's Who in the World (Marquis), Contemporary Poets (St. James); and Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series vol. 9 (Gale). On children's books, Something About the Author Autobiography Series vol. 22 (Gale) and Children's Literature Review vol. 27 (Gale).

Nude Descending a Staircase

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
A gold of lemon, root and rind,
She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh.
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by.

One-woman waterfall, she wears
Her slow descent like a long cape
And pausing, on the final stair,
Collects her motions into shape.

"Nude Descending a Staircase," copyright (c) 1961, 1994, from
NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE (reprint edition, Carnegie Mellon U. Press).

Cross Ties

Out walking ties left over from a track
Where nothing travels now but rust and grass,
I could take stock in something that would pass
Bearing down Hell-bent from behind my back:
A thing to sidestep or go down before,
Far off, indifferent as that curfew's wail
The evening wind flings like a sack of mail
Or close up as the moon whose headbeam stirs
A flock of cloud to make tracks. Down to strafe
Bristle-backed grass a hawk falls---there's a screech
Like steel wrenched taut till severed. Out of reach
Or else beneath desiring, I go safe,
Walk on, tensed for a leap, unreconciled
To a dark void all kindness.
When I spill
The salt I throw the devil some, and still,
I let them sprinkle water on my child.

"Cross Ties," copyright (c) 1985, from
CROSS TIES: SELECTED POEMS (U. of Georgia Press).

What We Might Be, What We Are
[for children]

If you were a scoop of vanilla
And I were the cone where you sat,
If you were a slowly pitched baseball
And I were the swing of a bat,

If you were a shiny new fishhook
And I were a bucket of worms,
If we were a pin and a pincushion,
We might be on intimate terms.

If you were a plate of spaghetti
And I were your piping-hot sauce,
We'd not even need to write letters
To put our affection across,

But you're just a piece of red ribbon
In the beard of a Balinese goat
And I'm a New Jersey mosquito.
I guess we'll stay slightly remote.

"What We Might Be, What We Are," copyright (c) 2002, from
EXPLODING GRAVY (Little, Brown).

A Curse on a Thief

Paul Dempster had a handsome tackle box
In which he'd stored up gems for twenty years:
Hooks marvelously sharp, ingenious lures
Jointed to look alive. He went to Fox

Lake, placed it on his dock, went in and poured
Himself a frosty Coors, returned to find
Some craven sneak had stolen in behind
His back and crooked his entire treasure horde.

Bad cess upon the bastard! May the bass
He catches with Paul Dempster's pilfered gear
Jump from his creel, make haste for his bare rear,
And, fins outthrust, slide up his underpass.

May each ill-gotten catfish in his pain
Sizzle his lips and peel away the skin.
May every perch his pilfered lines reel in
Oblige him to spend decades on the can.

May he be made to munch a pickerel raw,
Its steely gaze fixed on him as he chews,
Choking on every bite, while metal screws
Inexorably lock his lower jaw,

And having eaten, may he be transformed
Into a fish himself, with gills and scales,
A stupid gasper that a hook impales.
In Hell's hot griddle may he be well warmed

And served with shots of lava-on-the-rocks
To shrieking imps indifferent to his moans
Who'll rend his flesh and pick apart his bones,
Poor fish who hooked Paul Dempster's tackle box.

September Twelfth, 2001

Two caught on film who hurtle
from the eighty-second floor,
choosing between a fireball
and to jump holding hands,

Aren't us. I wake beside you,
stretch, scratch, taste the air,
the incredible joy of coffee
and the morning light.

Alive, we open eyelids
on our pitiful share of time,
we bubbles rising and bursting
in a boiling pot.

"A Curse on a Thief" and "September Twelfth, 2001," copyright (c) 2002, from THE LORDS OF MISRULE: POEMS, 1992-2001 (Johns Hopkins U. Press).

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All copyright by X. J. Kennedy. For permission to reprint or otherwise circulate "Nude..." and "Cross Ties," please address Curtis Brown, Ltd., Ten Astor Place, New York, NY 10003; for other poems, please address the publishers.