titles / Trouble with the
Machine by Christopher Kennedy
read an excerpt | read
selected reviews
"Miracles of compaction, the spare, ruminative narrations
of Christopher Kennedy are generous with brave, brutal truths about
the gorgeous catastrophe of being and remaining entirely, differently
human. Gravely hilarious, heartbreakingly precise, Kennedy's new collection
of outcries and crucialities is vivid and thrilling and brilliant--a
set of thundering scriptures about our loneliness, our loss." —Gary
Lutz, author of Stories in the Worst Way
 |
Trouble with the Machine
poems
by Christopher Kennedy
Trade Paperback
Price: $11.00
72 pages / 5 1/8 X 7 1/8
ISBN 0-9723363-1-1
Pub. Date: Nov. 1, 2003
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In his newest collection of prose poems, Trouble
with the Machine, Christopher Kennedy again takes us on a tour
of his brilliantly odd-ball world, a world where town hall meetings
turn into blood-baths, where God calls on the telephone to check in
with mortals who are calmly ironing their souls in the kitchen, where
wounds aren't merely worn on the sleeve but actually attend parties
to pick fights with the other guests. Kennedy's poetry is fiercely
comic, deliciously irreverent, and a welcome oasis in the dry landscape
of modern poetry.
Christopher Kennedy’s writing has appeared
or will appear in many journals and magazines, including Grand
Street, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s, and Mississippi Review.
He received a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the
Arts in 1999 and a Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts grant
in 1997. One of the founding editors of the literary journal, 3rd
Bed, he is the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing
at Syracuse University.
“The best way I can describe Chris Kennedy's weird
and sorrowful work is with three lines from The Tempest: 'Nothing
of him that doth fade/But doth suffer a sea change/Into something
rich and strange'. I can't say how, but to me that's a picture of
Kennedy's book." –Mary Gaitskill, author of Bad
Behavior
“Shuttling between midget clans and leather voodoo
monkeys and covering all odd stops in between, Trouble with the
Machine effortlessly upgrades prose poetry to the 21st century.
Kennedy's tiny worlds offer a seamless yet paradoxical surrealism
that feels at once startling and comfortable, humorous and unsettling.
The only trouble with Trouble with the Machine is that you
eventually reach the last page.” –Brian Evenson,
author of Father of Lies
Praise for Kennedy’s first book, Nietzsche's
Horse:
“Singular and deeply pleasurable. Chris Kennedy’s prosetry
is a lonely anarchic nation-state unto itself, half vacation funspot,
half eerie purgatorial layover. There is joy and dread here, in every
carefully considered line, and evidence of a brain committed to giving
shape to the thoughts we keep in a small box, on the top shelf, of our
darkest, dankest closet.” –Dave Eggers, author of
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
“A haunting, complex, and very beautiful book. Kennedy has a deep
understanding of American longing and the inevitable losses associated
with that longing and, because he is a powerful artist, is able to make
from that loss a wonderful victory: this moving portrait of the human
heart examining itself.” –George Saunders, author of
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
“Nietzsche’s Horse is full of bad luck and surprises; a kind
of American life that can turn religion or science or family quickly
into a waking dream or nightmare. Christopher Kennedy is a remarkable
storyteller, whispering little mysteries to the reader from many rooms
in a concave house. Comic, bewildered, and brilliant, Nietzsche’s
Horse is a riveting book.” –Michael Burkard, author
of The Fires They Kept
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selected reviews
