Chrisopher Kennedy’s The Strange God Who Makes Us
Fickleness of Existence, Memory, and Meaning: A Review of Christopher Kennedy’s The Strange God Who Makes Us by Natalie Mudd
People die and often others forget them, but in Christopher Kennedy’s new collection of poetry from BOA Editions, Ltd., we’re invited to remember. Kennedy’s poetry does well to blend his personal experiences with scenes and images anyone can sympathize with, regardless of what experiences they’ve had themselves. When entering this book, expect prose poetry that meshes with your memories and experiences from start to finish. This book covers heavy topics like loneliness, Alzheimer’s disease, and thoughts of depression; it also speculates on human existence through the lens of time, creating broad strokes and themes that allow readers to form their own interpretations and meanings.
Kennedy is the author of several previous books, including Nietzsche’s Horse (Mitki Press, 2001), Trouble with the Machine (Low Fidelity Press, 2003), Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2007), Ennui Prophet (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2011), and Clues from the Animal Kingdom (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2018). He’s the director of the MFA program in creative writing at Syracuse University and a founding editor of the literary journal 3rd Bed. More of his writing can be found in a variety of journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, McSweeney’s, and Issue 7 of Miracle Monocle.
In order to introduce readers to one strand of his work in The Strange God Who Makes Us, I thought I’d share a brief passage from “Memory Unit: Braids.”
Today my thoughts braid and unravel, the dull repetition of what my mother utters from her mouth makes twilight in my brain. I stare at the picture of me and my siblings, hung on the wall to remind. I’m the youngest. I have a nervous smile, as if I can see the future.
The images present here are vivid and impactful, inviting readers to contemplate the experience of seeing the future in an image from the past. I admire Kennedy’s use of the prose poem form to give his poetry a narrative thrust that does well to express his unique voice. Despite this formal choice, the poems offer a high degree of image intensity; they also flow easily from one page to the next. Visualizing the stories in the poems came naturally to me as a reader.
Kennedy doesn’t shy away from nuanced topics—or from getting his views across in his work. The book is split into three numbered sections. Section I features poems about loss, family, and meaning. While reading these poems, I felt challenged to consider my own viewpoints and to look back at my desires at a younger age, to question the permanence of those feelings, and to consider the meaning of my relationships to others and my relationship to faith.
While The Strange God Who Makes Us doesn’t make an explicit argument in support of the existence of God, it doesn’t make an argument against the existence of God either; rather, the book advances the argument that the life of a human must be like that of a God, if there is one. We’re influenced by the people we’ve lost, by our media, and by our families, but hold out faith for something bigger. For example, in “Of Want and Need,” the speaker in the poem says:
In the dewdrop: a universe. I was told not to look at the sun, and it all I have ever wanted to do. The locked door, the forbidden forest, the fragile shell: open, walk hold. I want only what I cannot have.
While the entire book is composed of prose poems, the content between sections differs, with a clear focus on disease and family in the second section. In this section, you’ll find the speaker of the poems reflecting on their lived experiences with their mother. This section prompted me to reflect on my own memories and experiences with impermanence and thread those thoughts through the whole of the book. I’m happy to recommend The Strange God Who Makes Us to readers. It’s easy to read, leaves room for reflection, and is vivid in ways unique to the poet. Preorder this collection of 60 prose poems from BOA, Ltd. directly.