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5.0 out of 5 stars
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may", March 23, 2008
X.J. Kennedy published two books of poetry in 2007. He writes that
In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus "has the best poems [I've] written, plus 27 new ones, some of them pretty good too. This collection has been cited as a 2008 Notable Book by the American Library Association."
The second volume is
Peeping Tom's Cabin: Comic Verse; he promises to write no more comic verse until 2009. "This book collects the cream of [my] light or comic verse written for adults (not children) over a lifetime, and includes parodies, limericks, clerihews, previously unpublished 'brat' poems, a section called 'Tawdry Bawdry', and much besides."
(Kennedy admits that he has "never understood how you tell light verse from poetry, exactly," I suppose you could buy a copy of both books, and see if he's separated the poems from the comic verses properly. One temptation: "Once upon a midnight dreary,/Blue and lonesome, missed my dearie./ Would I find her? Any hope?/ Quoth the raven six times, 'Nope.'")
I happily chose the book of the more serious poems. Kennedy is a master of light and satirical verse. His style is laconic, with sharp and caustic wit. "Nude Descending a Staircase" inspired by Duchamp:
"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."
He treats an even more serious subject with that same sure hand:
"So I went to the funeral of God,
A ten-Cadillac affair,
And sat in a stun. It seemed everyone
Who had helped do Him in was there:
Karl Marx had a wide smirk on his face;
Friedrich Engels, a simpering smile,
And Friedrich Nietzsche, worm-holed and leechy,
Kept tittering all the while."
Kennedy visits with other dignitaries, including the Pope who is worried about future employment at his advanced age, and then walks out in a stupor when the coffin turns up empty:
"The sun kept pursuing overhead
Its habitual endeavor,
And the bountiful earth rolled on, rolled on,
As though it might last forever."
The title poem is a wonderful riff on gathering rose buds while you can. The heroine remembers better days:
"In a car like the Roxy I'd roll to the track,
A steel-guitar trio and bar in the back,
And the wheels made no noise, they turned ever so fast;
Still it took you ten minutes to see me go past."
And delivers her warning:
"Let you hold in mind, girls, that your beauty must pass
Like a lovely white clover that rusts with its grass.
Keep your bottoms off bar stools and marry while young
Or be left, an old barrel with many a bung."
Finally, what other poet could take an important message from modern marketing?
"Innocent Times
When doctors puffed their cigarettes and fat
Advanced unchecked, invading hordes of hearts,
When cheap thermometer and thermostat
Leaked jets of mercury like poison darts,
When every shoe store's miracle machine
Displayed the bones x-rayed inside your shoes,
When like a knight in armor Listerine
Slew dragon Halitosis, clear heads chose
Calvert, and loving housewives loaded pies
With sugar (as "your family deserves"),
When soothing syrup smothered babies' cries
And Sanka vanquished Mister Coffee Nerves,
When toothpaste came in squooshy tubes of lead,
And safety belts in cars seemed passing fads,
How in the Sam Hill could you end up dead?
Hadn't you lived according to the ads?"
Bite, clarity, humor, insight. Kennedy delivers more than 50 years of collected pleasure.
Robert C. Ross 2008
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