Wonderful News!

When I started this blog, I promised myself that it wouldn't be an "about-me" blog, and I've tried to keep that promise. This week, however, I'm excited to share some really special news with you in lieu of a prompt or guest blogger post.

My new book, A Lightness, A Thirst, Or Nothing At All, is now ready for immediate shipment (at a generous discount) via Amazon.com.

 

Trailer

If you haven't already ordered a copy,
I very much hope you will (and thank you in advance for your support)!

  

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

(You may also place an order through your favorite bookseller.)

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From the Publisher's Press Release

"Welcome Rain Publishers (www.welcomerain.com) is pleased to announce publication of A Lightness, A Thirst, Or Nothing At All by Adele Kenny, a collection of 53 prose poems. Prose poems, which are arranged in short paragraphs rather than in lines, include deliberate fragments, the language of dreams, and an occasional nod to the surreal. Kenny combines these techniques with her signature elements of striking imagery and compelling immediacy to inform an enhanced view of the ways in which the interior life intersects with the outside world. These poems startle, surprise, and tell us things about ourselves that we didn't know."

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About the Book

"A gorgeous, deeply pondered work of art. I love it."

             
          —Renée Ashley, Poetry Editor of The Literary Review

"In language so subtly pitched, paced and modulated it captures our attention without drawing attention to itself, Kenny draws us into discovering that what never changes is all around us in the ever-changing world, that one is only approachable, knowable, bearable through the other.  We trust her to be our guide because her vision is so unwavering."

          —Martin J. Farawell, Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival Director

"Talk about channeling! Here reborn is Emily Dickinson, replete with the mystery, the haunting spirituality, and the metaphysical imagery. Adele, more than any other contemporary poet, balances all these elements so well, though with a touch far more personal than Dickinson’s." 

                             
          —Charles DeFanti, Author of The Wages of Expectation

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Sample Poems

Click Here for Video Remix of "Twilight and What There Is" (Video and Reading by Nic Sebastian)

WHAT YOU KNOW

A stray dog laps the moon from a broken flowerpot. Silk hydrangeas bloom against the fence. A heron stands on the clothesline—bluer than blue—perched where (sky, earth) edges converge.

On the wall, the painting of a clock ticks, hands painted in at three forty-seven. She takes a wax apple from the bowl and peels it with a silver fruit knife. Sugared bread dries on the table. Across the room, a dimensional window masquerades as persuasion. If you believe it, it is.

WHAT CALLS YOU

Back then, I wasn’t sure what calling meant. I thought something mystical—God’s hand on my arm, a divine voice speaking my name. Instead, I discovered the colors of cyclamen, how even the meanest weeds burst into bloom.

It works like this—among the books and fires—grace comes disguised as the winter finch, its beak in the seed; the twilight opossum that feeds on scraps—her babies born beneath my neighbor’s shed. Every day, I learn what love is: the finches, the opossum, the child with Down Syndrome who asked, Can I hug you a hundred times?

Whatever idea I had of myself turns on this: what lives on breath is spirit. I discover the power of simple places—silence—the desire to become nothing.