I’ll Say This about You

On first reading a Mick Kennedy poem, I wrote that ＂poems got feet, too. / And feet are made for walking. Let’s go....＂ In I’ll Say this about You, Kennedy’s poems have feet that lift the reader ＂like a weather balloon.＂ In poems about people and scarecrows, horses and whales, coyotes and crows, they both mourn and celebrate Nature and Nature’s creatures, animals with fur and feathers and animals with skin, leaving the reader with the knowledge that ＂he [isn’t] alone.＂ Read these lyrically deft poems and let them lift you off your feet. They will have you levitating in a fine poetic air.

-George Drew

In Mick Kennedy’s I’ll Say This About Youthe poet invites us to stride with him through the ＂landscapes of the mind＂ as he explores man’s sense of consciousness and his place in nature, translating the human condition and nature into breathtaking song. Acknowledging himself a ＂syntax junky＂ in his nod to Frank O’Hara, Kennedy is likewise a grand master of poetic form and sound. The poems resonate with us because we sense something of our own creative experience in every stanza. What a wonderful glance at the human spirit-a splendid celebration by one of our best poetic voices.

-Ted Higgs, author of A Love Embargo and Scoring the Darkness

Mick Kennedy’s I’ll Say This about You has been a long time coming but it’s worth the wait. Every poem here is distinct, written with evocative passion and a sensibility that’s raw, not cooked; yes, there’s a sestina, but it’s a monologue in the voice of Kerouac, and there are sonnets, but their rhymes are innovatively slant. Kennedy shows homage to Lowell, O’Hara, and Frank Stanford, but the music, the images, the energy, and the feelings of these imaginative poems are his alone. Readers will want to return to these strong, engaging poems again and again.

-Matt Brennan, author of End of the Road and Snow in New York: New and Selected Poems