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Before Whose Glory
From an elderly Spaniard building his own cathedral to a straight-laced woman mortified to have been born at Woodstock, from ill-fated love beneath a kerosene moon on the shores of Lake Michigan to loneliness relieved by utter silence in Alps, Lawrence Kessenich’s poems draw vivid portraits of his own powerful experiences and those of colorful individuals, real and imagined, who engage life passionately.
86 pages, Paperback
First published March 29, 2013
2 people are currently reading
4 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Kessenich
10 books6 followersLawrence Kessenich is a fiction writer, poet, playwright, essayist, reviewer, editor, and teacher. He has published a number of short stories and won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Prize. He has published four books of poetry and two novels: He has also published essays, one of which was featured on NPR’s “This I Believe” and appears in the anthology This I Believe: On Love. His short plays have been produced in New York, Boston, and in Colorado, where he won the People’s Choice Award in a national drama competition. Kessenich is the co-managing editor of Ibbbetson Street literary magazine.
Kessenich was born and raised in Wisconsin in a loving family of nine children. He attended St. Monica's grade school in Whitefish Bay, Messmer High School in the city of Milwaukee, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was also briefly in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. After attending the Radcliffe Publishing Course, he spent 10 years in the editorial department at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, where he edited Shoeless Joe, the basis for the movie Field of Dreams (in which he and his wife Janet appear onscreen as extras), and many other fiction and nonfiction books.
Since leaving book publishing, Kessenich has made his living first as a technical writer and then as a marketing writer. He has also taught classes on writing and book publishing. He lives in the Boston area and is happy to consider readings, speaking engagements, workshops, and writing and editing work.
Honors
- Strokestown International Poetry Prize
- People's Choice Award at national Durango
10-Minute Play Festival
- Essay read on NPR's This I Believe and included in This I Believe:On Love anthology
- 3 poems read on NPR's Writer's Almanac
- 3 poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize
- 1st Prize in national Spirit First Poetry Contest
Kessenich was born and raised in Wisconsin in a loving family of nine children. He attended St. Monica's grade school in Whitefish Bay, Messmer High School in the city of Milwaukee, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was also briefly in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. After attending the Radcliffe Publishing Course, he spent 10 years in the editorial department at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, where he edited Shoeless Joe, the basis for the movie Field of Dreams (in which he and his wife Janet appear onscreen as extras), and many other fiction and nonfiction books.
Since leaving book publishing, Kessenich has made his living first as a technical writer and then as a marketing writer. He has also taught classes on writing and book publishing. He lives in the Boston area and is happy to consider readings, speaking engagements, workshops, and writing and editing work.
Honors
- Strokestown International Poetry Prize
- People's Choice Award at national Durango
10-Minute Play Festival
- Essay read on NPR's This I Believe and included in This I Believe:On Love anthology
- 3 poems read on NPR's Writer's Almanac
- 3 poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize
- 1st Prize in national Spirit First Poetry Contest
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 6, 2013
Every page of this lovely book, Kessenich’s first full-length collection of poetry, has meaning and impact. Many of the poems are inspired by news blurbs or other quotations and offer a unique, meaningful take on topics that might otherwise be disregarded as mundane. Kessenich has achieved a peace and wisdom that informs all that he sees, and in these poems, he shares those gifts with the reader.
In “Wild Turkeys,” the speaker observes a flock of the “gentle grazers” from his office window—
“They only need a patch of earth/to scratch, a place to raise their pink young. And/come to think of it, do any of us need more?”
In “Crypt of St. Francis, Assisi, Italy,” a reverie on the self-flaggelation of St. Francis includes the thought that “the flesh is brave and pagan,/will endure countless false lessons to teach us one that’s true.”
This volume of poetry teaches many lessons of the world of the everyday; many of the poems tell a small story and offer that special, most important detail that we might otherwise fail to see. And scattered among these gentle, insightful tales are more powerful slugs of wisdom that can at times take the reader’s breath away. The poem “Enlightenment” reminds us that “Everything depends upon/our comprehending physics./How the fat man’s thigh/pressed against yours on the bus seat is/your thigh too.” Reading the surrounding poems about washing dishes in a home in American suburbia (“Brief Vacation”) and about the brutal wars in Baghdad, Afghanistan and Israel (“Primordial”), one cannot help but remember that each of these stories is about us.
While we are all one, we are each individually lonely, and we ask many questions for which the answers are vague. “We spend/our lives attempting to reunite in small/and often brutal ways, but we are whispering/through an endless dark and no one hears” (“Consolation”). But of course the poet hears.
Ultimately, we are reminded of our species’ role on earth. In “The Need To Believe,” we are told of our belief that “we’re special/that our lives impress the earth.” The poem notes that “We’d love to believe that God/reached down and plucked us/from the wild pack, designating/us his representatives of earth./But my vote goes to mountains/and the fields of daisies at their feet.” Earth “forgets us/as quickly as raindrops/evaporate on hot stone.” This is not a dark message, but rather sets one’s feet on the ground and encourages a life spent in celebration of our glorious surroundings.
Kessenich’s humility on behalf of humankind, coupled with his fascination with the earth and those who inhabit it, has lasting power and should be experienced.
In “Wild Turkeys,” the speaker observes a flock of the “gentle grazers” from his office window—
“They only need a patch of earth/to scratch, a place to raise their pink young. And/come to think of it, do any of us need more?”
In “Crypt of St. Francis, Assisi, Italy,” a reverie on the self-flaggelation of St. Francis includes the thought that “the flesh is brave and pagan,/will endure countless false lessons to teach us one that’s true.”
This volume of poetry teaches many lessons of the world of the everyday; many of the poems tell a small story and offer that special, most important detail that we might otherwise fail to see. And scattered among these gentle, insightful tales are more powerful slugs of wisdom that can at times take the reader’s breath away. The poem “Enlightenment” reminds us that “Everything depends upon/our comprehending physics./How the fat man’s thigh/pressed against yours on the bus seat is/your thigh too.” Reading the surrounding poems about washing dishes in a home in American suburbia (“Brief Vacation”) and about the brutal wars in Baghdad, Afghanistan and Israel (“Primordial”), one cannot help but remember that each of these stories is about us.
While we are all one, we are each individually lonely, and we ask many questions for which the answers are vague. “We spend/our lives attempting to reunite in small/and often brutal ways, but we are whispering/through an endless dark and no one hears” (“Consolation”). But of course the poet hears.
Ultimately, we are reminded of our species’ role on earth. In “The Need To Believe,” we are told of our belief that “we’re special/that our lives impress the earth.” The poem notes that “We’d love to believe that God/reached down and plucked us/from the wild pack, designating/us his representatives of earth./But my vote goes to mountains/and the fields of daisies at their feet.” Earth “forgets us/as quickly as raindrops/evaporate on hot stone.” This is not a dark message, but rather sets one’s feet on the ground and encourages a life spent in celebration of our glorious surroundings.
Kessenich’s humility on behalf of humankind, coupled with his fascination with the earth and those who inhabit it, has lasting power and should be experienced.
March 10, 2014
Book Review
Before Whose Glory by Lawrence Kessenich
2013 FutureCycle Press
Lawrence Kessenich’s Before Whose Glory is his first full length collection of poems, published in 2013 by FutureCycle Press. Kessenich writes about time and space, people and places, unfathomable mysteries and the beauty of nature, the human condition and the experience of being alive. Before Whose Glory is a collection of beautifully crafted poems, each one a story, each one its own self contained universe.
To say that Kessenich’s poems are accessible is not to say they are without depth. The poems in this collection are deceptively complex, intricately layered and subtly nuanced. Each poem offers a clear path through the piece without obfuscation, needlessly difficult arcane references or unintelligible abstractions that might otherwise leave me bewildered and wondering if I’ve missed the point. These pieces are compelling and evocative. They insinuate their way into my subconscious and run through my head like my favorite songs. They are poems I find myself going back to and noticing something new with each reading.
Kessenich’s poetry is narrative and reflective and the artist’s sensibilities are pervasive throughout the collection. His understated, gently ironic humor and sense of the absurd comes through in the pieces based on true stories ripped from the news that are stranger than fiction. Other poems are poignant and compassionate reflections on relationships and family life written from the perspective of being a kid with a paper route, a son, a lover, a husband, a father, or a citizen of planet Earth.
In his well crafted, symmetrical poems, Kessenich demonstrates a dazzling ability for juxtaposing the mundane with the sublime. Some pieces begin in a very ordinary setting and end in reverent contemplation of the spiritual and metaphysical and sometimes it’s the other way around. Either way, the poems in Before Whose Glory give me cause to pause; stop what I’m doing, question, reflect, appreciate and remind me to be grateful for life and all its blessings.
Before Whose Glory by Lawrence Kessenich
2013 FutureCycle Press
Lawrence Kessenich’s Before Whose Glory is his first full length collection of poems, published in 2013 by FutureCycle Press. Kessenich writes about time and space, people and places, unfathomable mysteries and the beauty of nature, the human condition and the experience of being alive. Before Whose Glory is a collection of beautifully crafted poems, each one a story, each one its own self contained universe.
To say that Kessenich’s poems are accessible is not to say they are without depth. The poems in this collection are deceptively complex, intricately layered and subtly nuanced. Each poem offers a clear path through the piece without obfuscation, needlessly difficult arcane references or unintelligible abstractions that might otherwise leave me bewildered and wondering if I’ve missed the point. These pieces are compelling and evocative. They insinuate their way into my subconscious and run through my head like my favorite songs. They are poems I find myself going back to and noticing something new with each reading.
Kessenich’s poetry is narrative and reflective and the artist’s sensibilities are pervasive throughout the collection. His understated, gently ironic humor and sense of the absurd comes through in the pieces based on true stories ripped from the news that are stranger than fiction. Other poems are poignant and compassionate reflections on relationships and family life written from the perspective of being a kid with a paper route, a son, a lover, a husband, a father, or a citizen of planet Earth.
In his well crafted, symmetrical poems, Kessenich demonstrates a dazzling ability for juxtaposing the mundane with the sublime. Some pieces begin in a very ordinary setting and end in reverent contemplation of the spiritual and metaphysical and sometimes it’s the other way around. Either way, the poems in Before Whose Glory give me cause to pause; stop what I’m doing, question, reflect, appreciate and remind me to be grateful for life and all its blessings.
March 14, 2018
We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:
VICTORIAN PAINTING
The girl in the foreground is mute
as the gray stump of house behind her.
Something pushes out from behind her face,
enlarges her ears, expands her head.
Her hat no longer fits. It lies
discarded on the lawn, red ribbon trailing.
Her parents have not moved for an hour.
The mother is sheathed in black,
the father in Sunday best.
The cat near the pram is not a cat at all;
it is a stone. Nor is the sheep alive.
It must have wandered into the yard
and froze. Nothing moves here,
though the girl may try. The hill
beneath her feet is a gripped fist.
LOVE: A MISCONCEPTION
The spring moon rose like a promise
over Lake Michigan, a transparent
orb in which we read our future. You
would capture the world inside
the black box of your Nikon. I
would do the same with words.
Kneeling on the damp sand, all we saw
was possibility. Rays of moonshine
laid a path across the still water;
we imagined following it over
the event horizon into our dreams.
Only later would we kneel before each other,
begging understanding and mercy.
Only later would we learn that
moonshine also burns like kerosene.
Only later would we discover the true definition
of event horizon: “the surface of a black hole;
a point of no return; anything within it
can’t get out, even at the speed of light.”
VICTORIAN PAINTING
The girl in the foreground is mute
as the gray stump of house behind her.
Something pushes out from behind her face,
enlarges her ears, expands her head.
Her hat no longer fits. It lies
discarded on the lawn, red ribbon trailing.
Her parents have not moved for an hour.
The mother is sheathed in black,
the father in Sunday best.
The cat near the pram is not a cat at all;
it is a stone. Nor is the sheep alive.
It must have wandered into the yard
and froze. Nothing moves here,
though the girl may try. The hill
beneath her feet is a gripped fist.
LOVE: A MISCONCEPTION
The spring moon rose like a promise
over Lake Michigan, a transparent
orb in which we read our future. You
would capture the world inside
the black box of your Nikon. I
would do the same with words.
Kneeling on the damp sand, all we saw
was possibility. Rays of moonshine
laid a path across the still water;
we imagined following it over
the event horizon into our dreams.
Only later would we kneel before each other,
begging understanding and mercy.
Only later would we learn that
moonshine also burns like kerosene.
Only later would we discover the true definition
of event horizon: “the surface of a black hole;
a point of no return; anything within it
can’t get out, even at the speed of light.”
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews