Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death

Christopher Kennedy
74 pages (2007); 561KB download
BOA Editions; ISBN: 978-1-929918-98-0

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Winner of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award for 2007. “It would almost be enough to praise Christopher Kennedy’s ‘Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death’ for its rich humor, but as the paradoxical title suggests, the levity here is always underscored by gravity. In elegies, sonnets, fables and odes, these poems swivel between the absurd and tragic; the mundane and enchanted; the rooted and unsettled. We witness a shrewd, wise-cracking spirit resisting despair even while admitting, ‘It’s only a matter of time before I become an inegral part of the conflict.’” — Terrance Hayes