Anesthesia

by Kenny Fries

Poetry. "This is no ordinary love story. Fries has recorded all the forward, backward and sideways movements we make as we struggle with despair and hope, denial and fear, the unanswerable questions of an epidemic. These poems become tools which can help us survive" -Ruth L. Schwartz, San Francisco Bay Times.

Genres: Poetry, Disability, Disability Studies

82 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Kenny Fries received the prestigious Creative Capital literature grant for In the Province of the Gods. He is the author of Body, Remember: A Memoir and The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory, winner of the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. He is the editor of Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out and the author of the libretto for The Memory Stone, an opera commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera. His books of poems include Anesthesia, Desert Walking, and In the Gardens of Japan.

Kenny received the Creative Arts Fellowship from the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, has twice been a Fulbright Scholar (Japan and Germany), and has received grants from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange), Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council.

He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College.

Reviews

[b (tobias forge's version) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I buy slim volumes of poetry at McKay’s on a whim, a handful at a time, because they’re $1.50 and I feel that I can afford to take a chance on serendipity. Anesthesia was one of those books. I had never heard of Kenny Fries, but something about the medical title caught my eye and seemed relevant in 2020, a year in which I thought a lot about bodies, medicine, sickness, and surgery, for a variety of reasons. The poems in Anesthesia deal with physical disability and AIDS, and with sexuality and love shared between gay men. They are physical, sensual pieces of writing that complicate ideas of what a sick or disabled body can do; they contain bittersweetness, acceptance, joy, and violence.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was incredible. Spare, poignant poems that celebrate and interrogate disabled sexuality. Loved it.

[Rich Farrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tight collection of narrative poetry that explores disability, sexuality, Jewish heritage, and AIDS.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this poetry collection for myself when I visited Ithaca, NY last autumn, from the same bookstore where I owned The Face from, so it felt like an appropriate book to read next. I originally noticed the medical imagery, then when I took it off the shelf saw it had been signed before I was even born and still had a poster advertising that event, which, objectively, is cool! Even better, the poems traverse links between physical disability, queerness, and sexual power dynamics, in fascinating and meaningful ways. There are sections where Fries writers Monet persona poems, which personally were my favorite. This certainly isn't the style of poetry I would typically choose to read, but I really, sincerely enjoyed being proven wrong here!

[Anaesth Samar · Rating 4 out of 5]

WoW like it..

Hope to see our faculty site, thanks in advance
http://www.fmed.bu.edu.eg/en/
http://www.fmed.bu.edu.eg/fmed/index....
http://www.fmed.bu.edu.eg/fmed/index....
http://www.fmed.bu.edu.eg/fmed/index....

[Roland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good.

[francis sutphin · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful, transformative book. read "In These Times" and "Surgery" over and over again