Monday, April 06, 2009

What is Sarah Kennedy reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Sarah Kennedy, author of poetry books including A Witch's Dictionary, Consider the Lilies, and the newly released Home Remedies.

One paragraph from her entry:
But of course I don’t ever get very far from poetry. Right now I have some books by young writers on my table—Katie Cappello’s Perpetual Care, which I have just begun; K. A. Hays’s Dear Apocalypse, and Farrah Field’s Rising. I am putting off Field’s book until last, because I was so taken by the title of the first poem, “Self-Portrait in Toad Suck, Arkansas,” that I’m afraid if I begin the book I will miss class to finish it. (The cover of this book is very appealing too.) I find myself these days drawn to books that have historical and political heft, though that weight can sink a book that lacks complicated tropes and tones. Still, I want poems to do more and more work these days; I want more meaning, more layers to investigate. This is one reason that Hays’s book has been lingering on my desk and in my mind. Her use of biblical allusion, religious registers of language, and the natural world resonate in ways that keep me coming back to individual poems (particularly “The Way of all the Earth,” at least today). Tomorrow, however, is Saturday, and I believe I’m going to let myself dive into Rising.[read on]
An associate professor of English at Mary Baldwin College, Sarah Kennedy lives in Rockbridge County, Virginia, with her husband.

Learn more about Home Remedies, and read some sample poems from Kennedy's Consider the Lilies, Flow Blue, and A Witch's Dictionary.

Writers Read: Sarah Kennedy.

--Marshal Zeringue