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Nietzsche's Horse

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There's a small-minded, rigid part of me that wants writers to commit either to poetry or prose, and stop trying to do both at the same time. Christopher Kennedy's book amply demonstrates how wrong I am. Here is why the form exists, and how it should look when it's good. Kennedy has found and mapped new territory in the world, and in my own head. The title piece, Nietzsche's Horse, is one of the most powerful, lucid, and memorable poems I've ever read, in any form. I stand corrected, and happily so.

Sounding a bit like Russell Edson's younger, more emotionally vulnerable cousin, Kennedy prosetry is funny and devastating, often at the same time. The voice has a straightness to it, giving the poems a fable-like quality, evident in some of the titles: "The Bird Man of Albatross," "The Man Who Invented Hunger," "Darwin's Last Stand." Like Edson's, this writing insists on its own logic to an extent that makes comedy; unlike Edson's, these poems take bold emotional risks. We should all be so resourceful and so brave.