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That Swing

Name: That Swing
Brand: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
SKU: 9781421422442
Price: 47.99 AUD
Availability: InStock

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESSISBN: 9781421422442

Poems, 2008-2016

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By X. J. Kennedy
Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Release Date: June 14, 2017
Format: PAPERBACK
Pages: 96

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In this, his ninth book of poetry, lyric master X. J. Kennedy regales his readers with engaging rhythm fittingly signaled by the book's title, which echoes Duke Ellington's jazz classic ""It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)."" Kennedy's poems, infused with verve and surprise, are by turns irresistibly funny and sharply insightful about life in America.

Some poems are personal recollections of childhood and growing up, as in ""My Mother Consigns to the Flames My Trove of Comic Books."" ""Thomas Hardy's Obsequies"" tells the bizarre true account of the literary giant's burial. Other poems portray memorable characters, from Jane Austen (""Jane Austen Drives to Alton in Her Donkey Trap"") to a giant land tortoise (""Lonesome George"") to a slow-witted man hired to cook for a nudist colony (""Pudge Wescott""). Kennedy is a storyteller of the first order, relating tales of travel to far-reaching places, from the Galápagos Islands and Tiananmen Square to the hectic back streets of Bamako, Mali. This wise and clever book is rounded out with adept translations of work by Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, and others.

CONTENTS

1. Recollections

Lonesome George 3
My Mother Consigns to the Flames My Trove
of Comic Books 4
The Odors of New Jersey 5
Hopes 6
Insanity in the Basement 7
Literacy 9
Progress 10
Early Morning in Turks and Caicos Hospital 14

2. Saints and Others

Martha
Catherine
Nicholas
Jane Austen Drives to Alton in Her Donkey Trap
Thomas Hardy's Obsequies
A Word from Hart Crane's Ghost
In Tiananmen Square

3. Versions

Sonnet for Hélène (Pierre de Ronsard)
Abyss (Charles Baudelaire)
Sea Breeze (Stéphane Mallarmé)
Because the Dinner Meat Was Done to Death
(Stéphane Mallarmé)
My Bohemia (Arthur Rimbaud)
Pierrot's Soliloquy (Jules Laforgue)
Last Poem (Robert Desnos)
Mortal Landscape [Robert Sabatier]

4 Diversions

Riposte
Disabled Music
On a Young Man's Remaining an Undergraduate
for Twelve Years
Cold Beer at the Paul Revere Capture Site

5. Easters

Invitation to the Dance
Jews
Easter Parade in Sorrento

6. Last Acts

Departure
In the Motel Office
Pudge Wescott
Tourist Taking Pictures of Children in Mali
Rush Hour
Rummage Sale
How It Happens
At Eighty

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

""Now eighty-six, we should all hope Kennedy amends this closing prayer, and asks the Lord to let him produce quality work well into his nineties.""

That Swing

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