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Second Opinion
PRAISE FOR LEATHA KENDRICK’S SECOND OPINION
In her shining new poems, at once sensual and tough-minded, Leatha Kendrick heads straight for the best subjects of poetry: love and loss. She writes at the height of her powers, with urgency—and wonder. The poems in Second Opinion are crammed with the marvelous details of childhood learning, domestic life, illness and health. Although they sharply observe the world, these exciting poems are born of interior moods, sparked by memory, fueled by crisis, and filled with awe.
—Molly Peacock
Leatha Kendrick writes about desire more honestly than any poet I know. The central section of Second Opinion—forthrightly addressing her cancer, in lucid and memorable ways—is breathtaking, but that “buried bomb” is counterbalanced by the poet’s appetite for the pleasures of this world, by “the instinct to hold life close.” “Desire,” she writes, is “a Magritte engine /roaring straight out of /that hearth, my heart,” and she eloquently yearns for family, for places left behind, for the lover’s touch that can transform any body into“ a blossoming hide.” Nobody celebrates everyday details more vividly than her, down to “the deep /peace of our feet touching/ as we sleep”: “What I can believe in, ”Kendrick says of her daughters, at the conclusion of the title poem, “is the healing of their fingers laced through mine.”
—Michael McFee
In the poem “What I’d Give Her,” Leatha Kendrick warns us, “Don’t refuse the joy of telling/what you see…” The poet certainly takes that advice to heart in this wonderful collection. Kendrick’s poems capture what she sees with directness and energy, in addition to craftsmanship, wordplay, and a fine, self-deprecating sense of humor. Especially powerful is the series of poems about her experience with breast cancer, culminating with the insight, “The map back is a flat / red road, underpinned with bone, she must take her reckonings upon.” Loss and regret may play roles in Leatha Kendrick’s work, but the energy that suffuses every one of these poems is love.
—Jack Coulehan
Leatha Kendrick’s poems speak in her true and particular voice of the complexities, and simplicities, of a woman’s life. Her rigorous sense of form both controls and magnifies the passion that energizes her work. While the poems about confronting breast cancer are at the heart of Second Opinion, Kendrick also explores the fleshly realities of family bonds with daughters, mother, husband, sister, all those flawed dynamics that comprise a life. Kendrick’s poems are vividly, drastically human.
—Jane Gentry Vance
In her shining new poems, at once sensual and tough-minded, Leatha Kendrick heads straight for the best subjects of poetry: love and loss. She writes at the height of her powers, with urgency—and wonder. The poems in Second Opinion are crammed with the marvelous details of childhood learning, domestic life, illness and health. Although they sharply observe the world, these exciting poems are born of interior moods, sparked by memory, fueled by crisis, and filled with awe.
—Molly Peacock
Leatha Kendrick writes about desire more honestly than any poet I know. The central section of Second Opinion—forthrightly addressing her cancer, in lucid and memorable ways—is breathtaking, but that “buried bomb” is counterbalanced by the poet’s appetite for the pleasures of this world, by “the instinct to hold life close.” “Desire,” she writes, is “a Magritte engine /roaring straight out of /that hearth, my heart,” and she eloquently yearns for family, for places left behind, for the lover’s touch that can transform any body into“ a blossoming hide.” Nobody celebrates everyday details more vividly than her, down to “the deep /peace of our feet touching/ as we sleep”: “What I can believe in, ”Kendrick says of her daughters, at the conclusion of the title poem, “is the healing of their fingers laced through mine.”
—Michael McFee
In the poem “What I’d Give Her,” Leatha Kendrick warns us, “Don’t refuse the joy of telling/what you see…” The poet certainly takes that advice to heart in this wonderful collection. Kendrick’s poems capture what she sees with directness and energy, in addition to craftsmanship, wordplay, and a fine, self-deprecating sense of humor. Especially powerful is the series of poems about her experience with breast cancer, culminating with the insight, “The map back is a flat / red road, underpinned with bone, she must take her reckonings upon.” Loss and regret may play roles in Leatha Kendrick’s work, but the energy that suffuses every one of these poems is love.
—Jack Coulehan
Leatha Kendrick’s poems speak in her true and particular voice of the complexities, and simplicities, of a woman’s life. Her rigorous sense of form both controls and magnifies the passion that energizes her work. While the poems about confronting breast cancer are at the heart of Second Opinion, Kendrick also explores the fleshly realities of family bonds with daughters, mother, husband, sister, all those flawed dynamics that comprise a life. Kendrick’s poems are vividly, drastically human.
—Jane Gentry Vance
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 23, 2008
6 people want to read
About the author
Leatha Kendrick
10 books14 followersLeatha Kendrick grew up on a southern Kentucky farm, daughter of a veterinarian and a high school home economics teacher. Oldest of four children, she was most at home in fields or barns (when not reading a book on the window seat and looking out at the horizon). Her adult life was spent eastern Kentucky where she and her husband raised three daughters. Kendrick began writing seriously in midlife and found a first community of writers in Appalachia. Her poems, essays, memoir, and book reviews appear in journals including Tar River Poetry, Appalachian Heritage New Madrid Review, the Southern Poetry Review, the James Dickey Review, The Southern Women’s Review – and in many anthologies including The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume 3—Contemporary Appalachia; Listen Here!: Women Writing in Appalachia; I to I—Life Writing by Kentucky Feminists; and What Comes Down to Us – Twenty-Five Contemporary Kentucky Poets. She is the author of a documentary film, A Lasting Thing for the World – The Photography of Doris Ulmann and also co-edited Crossing Troublesome – Twenty-five Years of the Appalachian Writers Workshop, with George Ella Lyon. Among her writing awards are two Al Smith fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, as well as the Sallie Bingham Award and fellowships and grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She currently lives with her husband, Will, and one lively small black dog in Lexington, Kentucky. And Luckier is her fifth collection of poems.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 21, 2008
Leatha Kendrick writes poetry of such authority that she can tackle the big subjects, from breast cancer to war, without ever seeming shrill or off center.
I am a poet known for edginess. People seem to like a certain kind of assertiveness. They mistake it for courage. In Second Opinion (David Robert Books, 2008), Kendrick moves beyond mere edginess to the great grief that lies behind it. Though she can do edgy with the best of ‘em.
I am a poet known for edginess. People seem to like a certain kind of assertiveness. They mistake it for courage. In Second Opinion (David Robert Books, 2008), Kendrick moves beyond mere edginess to the great grief that lies behind it. Though she can do edgy with the best of ‘em.
Displaying 1 of 1 review