Desert Walking

by Kenny Fries

Poetry. From EXODUS to Eliot's THE WASTE LAND the desert has been the site for spiritual quests that balance a deep mourning for the human condition against a longing for joy and transcendence. I see this same alternation in Kenny Fries's DESERT WALKING, where the American wilderness fosters the poet's quest, its non-human austerity tempered by the presence and solace of a beloved camerado in the tradition of Whitman -- Alfred Corn.

82 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2000

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.