Devotional Forensics

by Joseph Kidney

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published March 11, 2025

Reviews

[Jillian B]

This is a gorgeous collection of poetry that bears the aesthetic flourishes of religion. It’s definitely one worth reading.

[Robert Hirzer]

This brilliant collection of poems by Joseph Kidney offers a deep and fresh meditation on life and the world in which we live. Neither the profound nor the mundane escapes his inquiring take on who we are. At times heart wrenching, always honest, often hopeful, yet wryly humorous, these poems are meant to be read and reread (preferably aloud), savoured and contemplated, enjoyed again and again. A true celebration of cerebration for all.

[P J M]

Loved it.

[Jane]

Joseph Kidney writes with an exacting shimmer that makes even the more obtuse-to-me aspects of his speakers' poetic subjects glow with life. One of my favourites is “Dove or Kestrel,” an ode to a brother that is also an ekphrastic poem for the art of conducting that is also, more quietly, about our role in the world with others, the strange relationship between feeling and decision. I don’t know if others have written about how anatomic it is situate a story of suicide and grief in the way Kidney does here with the speaker’s brother’s telling, imagining the relationship through the physical act of “look[ing] up to.” And then… to compare conducting with how the sun shines (just exquisite), echoed in “They Wrote the Old Pastoral from the City,” where Kidney imagines poetry as “astronomy but elegy.” And then the ending (of both poems actually) sneaks up on you. Reading “Dove or Kestrel” also casts a wonderful light to an earlier poem I loved, “Garbage Takeout,” where Kidney writes “I’d like to be / like Luther’s god and love the way / conductors dance to music made by dancing.” It’s one thing to aspire to live like the art of conducting, and it’s another to see that aspiration through one’s brother’s orchestral work and the understanding that takes place across growing within that brotherly bond.

Kidney is who I am subtweeting when I talk about poets who make me angry because I’m not writing poems right now.

[Margaryta]

An intricately crafted poetry collection. I could feel Kidney's academic expertise as well as passion for the subject he studied in the poems most closely related to Renaissance, Early Modern, and religious subjects. These poems were also my favourites. References as well as commentary on art in general were subtle and organically integrated into the framework of poems that were at times more contemporary, resulting in a temporal cross-pollination that shows continued relevance through a medicative approach.

[Jiayuan]

Love love love. This book made me dig out the Aeneid and actually read a section so I could compare it to Joseph Kidney's response. Some lines below from two different poems I loved so much:

"I have never known who does the letting / in such commands as let there be light"

"I used to pray to God / to give him confidence: I believe you, / I believe in you. Not so much anymore"

[Brittney]

Favorites: Shore Leave and The Order of Nature. Like I’m sorry to sound like a diva but this is a work of genius.

[Savi Hanning-Brown]

bone-deep beautiful