The Strange God Who Makes Us

(Paperback)

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An exploration of memory and memory lossand an examination of humanitys precarious relationship to the natural world in the Anthropocene. Christopher Kennedys The Strange God Who Makes Us documents our fragile relationship with time and the imperfect ways in which we document our lives. These prose poems serve as attempts to preserve and honor the past and serve as a call to action to insure an inhabitable planet for future generations.

Reviews

I was cold and felt the impermanence of being human, the narrator in one of Christopher Kennedys poems says while hiking an icy trail. Throughout The Strange God Who Makes Us, Kennedy invites the reader to feel this impermanencewhich often manifests itself in a playful existential questioning. Rather than fearing this mutability, Kennedy begrudgingly accepts it. Its just the way the world works, he seems to be saying. In the current prose-poem scene, where sameness reigns supreme, Kennedy offers a book full of intelligence, energy, and humor, all directed by an I who is intensely wise and self-effacing at the same time. I havent read a book of prose poems in a long time that I would call a classic, but The Strange God Who Makes Us certainly deserves that praise. Its a book only a master of the genre could write.

Author Bio

Christopher Kennedy is the author of Clues from the Animal Kingdom (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2018) Ennui Prophet (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2011), Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2007), which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, Trouble with the Machine (Low Fidelity Press, 2003), and Nietzsches Horse (Mitki/Mitki Press, 2001). He is one of the translators of Light and Heavy Things: Selected Poems of Zeeshan Sahil, (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2013), published as part of the Lannan Translation Series. His work has appeared in many print and on-line journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, The Progressive, Plume, New York Tyrant, Ninth Letter, Wigleaf, The Threepenny Review, Mississippi Review, and McSweeneys. In 2011, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. He is a professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Syracuse University.