British
poet Luke Kennard
has collected a number of glowing descriptions of his poetry – ingenious,
innovative, clever, entertaining, “one of British poetry’s brightest lights,”
and funny, among them. After reading Cain:
Poems, his latest collection, I would add “playful” and “a dash of
mischievousness.”
 |
| Luke Kennard |
The Cain
of the title is the Cain of the book of Genesis in the Bible, the man who
killed his brother Abel because he was jealous of the favor shown by God to
Abel’s offering. God didn’t smite Cain down for his crime, but he did put a
mark upon him and sent him into permanent exile and wandering. The Biblical
account doesn’t mention what the mark was, but it must have been noticeable.
In Kennard’s
poems, Cain shows up one day at the poet’s front door. The poet has lost his
faith and his marriage in the same week, and turned to the solace of beer – a lot
of beer, wine-strength wheat beers, in fact. The poet hears the doorbell ring,
and there’s an inflatable life-sized Frankenstein doll, behind which stands
Cain. (I can’t imagine that the inflatable Frankenstein is Cain’s mark, but it
does raise some interesting possibilities.)
To
continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak
Poetry.
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