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COURSING
The poems included in the collection reveal a remarkable poetic excellence. These poems aptly show profoundly imaginative power. No doubt, the poet is an adept in the intimate and convincing analysis of emotions.
BIO
Having grown up in Massachusetts and Maine, Kenneth Weene still considers himself a broody New Englander. However, he lived for many years in New York, where he practiced as a psychologist and taught at various colleges. During the nineteen-eighties, Ken started writing, primarily poetry.
When he and his wife Roz moved to Arizona in 2002, Ken Weene's passion for writing bloomed. Since then, he has written a stream of words including five novels, many short stories, essays, two plays (co-written with his friend Umar O Abdul), two novellas, and a number of poems.
Many of Ken's poems have been published in print and on the internet. This collection, selected by the poet, reflects his highly personal approach to poetry and to life. He sees his writing, and especially his poetry, as being a way to better understand the world as he has experienced it, as a continuation of the psychoanalytic process.
Find more information at www.kennethweene.com
BIO
Having grown up in Massachusetts and Maine, Kenneth Weene still considers himself a broody New Englander. However, he lived for many years in New York, where he practiced as a psychologist and taught at various colleges. During the nineteen-eighties, Ken started writing, primarily poetry.
When he and his wife Roz moved to Arizona in 2002, Ken Weene's passion for writing bloomed. Since then, he has written a stream of words including five novels, many short stories, essays, two plays (co-written with his friend Umar O Abdul), two novellas, and a number of poems.
Many of Ken's poems have been published in print and on the internet. This collection, selected by the poet, reflects his highly personal approach to poetry and to life. He sees his writing, and especially his poetry, as being a way to better understand the world as he has experienced it, as a continuation of the psychoanalytic process.
Find more information at www.kennethweene.com
123 pages, Paperback
Published April 26, 2022
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November 9, 2022
Coursing – A Strong, Diverse Collection
“Boxes in the Attic,” an excellent poem, introduces us to a troubled family that will be featured later in this collection. Kenneth Weene writes that “Memory of the dead is a luxury / we were taught to scorn.” This one statement tells us a great deal about the family and makes us ask why. Do they scorn such memory because Benjamin, the father’s brother died young? Could one death explain all or part of the family’s coldness? Perhaps. In “à quoi bon” (Is there ever a point), the poet shares his bitter memory of his parents: “in the end both are ghosts / and I argue with the dead / can the dead hear / do they have ears / did they / when living / care”.
“Argue with the dead.” These words resonate. I suspect that arguing with the dead is something that many of us do. In a sense the dead are not really dead for they live on in our hearts and souls. Day after day, we continue to relitigate the past even though the verdict can never change. This is a depressing but also profound truth.
Other poems are equally dark but in a different way. The poet comes from a Jewish background, and in “Holocaust Rag” he questions the possibility of true love during a holocaust when you can die in a single moment. “In the piled high of bodies / being mined for toothless gold / we’ll search for each other / in the terror of our souls.” Another poem, “Pirate burial,” informs us that “The Nazis erected no monuments, no stories / just recorded numbers instead of names.” In “Selling the family home,” “the purple stain” on the floor evokes the still painful memory of a lost love.
Elsewhere we find lighter, more inspiring or comforting fare. Weene makes us look at an “Antique Jar” with new eyes: “I make you mine to hold the past.” “Engraved” offers a “cloven rock” where “wedged from view, / a boy who did not wish to be sought” could find refuge. In turn, “Dressing for Leonard (Bernstein)” provides an updated version of West Side Story with Slick and Jasmine being the new lovers. Love poems also abound, and there is wit, as in the superb last stanza of “I found a strand of gray hair”:
As I grow old such reveries
take hold of me most cleverly;
each becomes a strand of me
trapped in a spider’s web.
Coursing contains something for just about everybody. The wife of a sultan who has never sexually touched her; a “slim, stiff, elegant” clarinet teacher who “waved / beauty into being”; a Beacon Hill Christmas; a “column of ants”, the musicality of verse, etc. The collection concludes with a dandy villanelle, “For Roz while listening to the music of Bill Evans”. It asks all-too-common questions: “Must that attraction we once felt now end? / Does such love have to give true lovers pain?” The answer as always seems to be both yes and no.
While reading Coursing, I wondered about the reason for the title. The cover shows a river, which follows a course, just as we follow our course or courses in life. Or perhaps the title echoes lines such as those in “Meditation on a new coffee pot” where tears “trace” other rivers, “the lines worn in my face”. There are other possibilities as well, including one that involves hounds chasing hares. Either way, Coursing is a collection well worth having.
Disclosure: I received this book for free in exchange for a review. The opinions expressed are entirely my own.
“Boxes in the Attic,” an excellent poem, introduces us to a troubled family that will be featured later in this collection. Kenneth Weene writes that “Memory of the dead is a luxury / we were taught to scorn.” This one statement tells us a great deal about the family and makes us ask why. Do they scorn such memory because Benjamin, the father’s brother died young? Could one death explain all or part of the family’s coldness? Perhaps. In “à quoi bon” (Is there ever a point), the poet shares his bitter memory of his parents: “in the end both are ghosts / and I argue with the dead / can the dead hear / do they have ears / did they / when living / care”.
“Argue with the dead.” These words resonate. I suspect that arguing with the dead is something that many of us do. In a sense the dead are not really dead for they live on in our hearts and souls. Day after day, we continue to relitigate the past even though the verdict can never change. This is a depressing but also profound truth.
Other poems are equally dark but in a different way. The poet comes from a Jewish background, and in “Holocaust Rag” he questions the possibility of true love during a holocaust when you can die in a single moment. “In the piled high of bodies / being mined for toothless gold / we’ll search for each other / in the terror of our souls.” Another poem, “Pirate burial,” informs us that “The Nazis erected no monuments, no stories / just recorded numbers instead of names.” In “Selling the family home,” “the purple stain” on the floor evokes the still painful memory of a lost love.
Elsewhere we find lighter, more inspiring or comforting fare. Weene makes us look at an “Antique Jar” with new eyes: “I make you mine to hold the past.” “Engraved” offers a “cloven rock” where “wedged from view, / a boy who did not wish to be sought” could find refuge. In turn, “Dressing for Leonard (Bernstein)” provides an updated version of West Side Story with Slick and Jasmine being the new lovers. Love poems also abound, and there is wit, as in the superb last stanza of “I found a strand of gray hair”:
As I grow old such reveries
take hold of me most cleverly;
each becomes a strand of me
trapped in a spider’s web.
Coursing contains something for just about everybody. The wife of a sultan who has never sexually touched her; a “slim, stiff, elegant” clarinet teacher who “waved / beauty into being”; a Beacon Hill Christmas; a “column of ants”, the musicality of verse, etc. The collection concludes with a dandy villanelle, “For Roz while listening to the music of Bill Evans”. It asks all-too-common questions: “Must that attraction we once felt now end? / Does such love have to give true lovers pain?” The answer as always seems to be both yes and no.
While reading Coursing, I wondered about the reason for the title. The cover shows a river, which follows a course, just as we follow our course or courses in life. Or perhaps the title echoes lines such as those in “Meditation on a new coffee pot” where tears “trace” other rivers, “the lines worn in my face”. There are other possibilities as well, including one that involves hounds chasing hares. Either way, Coursing is a collection well worth having.
Disclosure: I received this book for free in exchange for a review. The opinions expressed are entirely my own.
Displaying 1 of 1 review