House Of December
EXCERPTS
HOUSE OF DECEMBER 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. The new poems, like virtually all of Kennedy’s creations, are reflections, or more properly, meditations, on existence. “From Stones to Stars” contrasts two ways of looking at the world, the finite and the infinite, in recognition that man’s nature ultimately demands that he be concerned with the “whole” and not its innumerable fragments. 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 panegyrics “The Return” and “The Creation” also evidence his concern with these themes. In “The Return” he says: “The first order of all existence/is to rise,” but laments that ”…we engage in measures/ of desperate act—/ too late,/ for we are sealed in a wax/ where once light had been— fast in finite form.” 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.
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.
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 starts
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.
Copyright © 2006, 2007 Richard D. Kennedy. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the author.
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