Christopher Hennessy

Shifting intuitively between youthful belligerence, the individualization of collective myths, and portraits of erotic maturity and angst, Christopher Hennessy’s debut collection of poetry, Love-In-Idleness, commits itself to lyrical explorations underpinned by a sharp and honest introspection. These poems forget themselves, undulate, embrace the actual, dissolve and regroup in their efforts to detail moments of sustained interruption and desire. Here you will find a study of the vivisection of a Midwestern family, a soliloquy from the lover of a Han Dynasty emperor, the re-imagined death of Saint Sebastian, a steamy appropriation of Satie’s humorous score notes, an admirer’s courting of Carl Linnaeus, and the impending finality of a deathbed vigil. Together they announce the arrival of a gifted new voice in American poetry.