House Of December

 

 

 

 

Genre:  Anthology, meditations and reflections on the perennial themes of mankind.

Dedication:  William and Enid Kennedy

 

Frustra laborant quotquot se calculationibus fatigant pro inventione quadraturae circuli – “Futile is the labor of those who fatigue themselves with calculations to square the circle.”  (Michael Stifel, 1544)

 

 

Including Selections from Words, And There Are Five Seasons and Interlude. Seven magnificent new poems and selections from two previously published collections available only in hard-to-obtain privately printed editions comprise Richard David Kennedy’s HOUSE OF DECEMBER. Its author obviously sees “things clearly ...and whole,” to quote E. M. Forster in Howard’s End, and he has also realized Forster’s admitted intention as voiced in the frontispiece of that novel: “To connect…” The poems on physical nature, fleshly and spiritual love, the creative act, and time, all echo Kennedy’s concern with the sanctity of the individual and the presence of the godhead in each and every one.  The poet’s technical virtuosity adds further complexity and density to his profound ideas. He makes us see things not only clearly and whole, but differently than before, the mark of an artist of the

first rank.

 

Excerpts

 

FROM: Interlude

 

What Is Good

 

To touch is to collude

with surrender,

that which from the seams

seeps inside

and is child to contingencies,

whose offspring are of love

and of joy

and all things

which are good;

for what is good is constant,

and what is constant

cannot be denied.

 

Past The Stars

 

If not

for the stars,

we would believe

ourselves immortal.

They give us balance,

And, try as we will,

we cannot project

feeling upon them...

 

Past the stars

of the visible eye

are more stars

we have conceived in mind.

And to these we are closer

than to those of the eye,

and in this is the essence

of the universe.

 

HOUSE OF DECEMBER   (Copyright © 1972, 2008 by Richard D. Kennedy- all rights reserved.)