Poet/performer/librettist Douglas Kearney’s second, full-length collection of poetry, The Black Automaton (2009), was Catherine Wagner’s selection for the National Poetry Series. Red Hen Press published Kearney’s third collection, Patter, in 2014. His most recent books are Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015) and Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016). Also a librettist, he has collaborated with the composer Anne LeBaron on the opera Sucktion, which received a MAP Fund grant and premiered at the New Original Works Festival in Los Angeles in 2008, and on Mordake with composer Erling Wold, which premiered in 2008 at the San Francisco International Arts Festival. He has received fellowships at Cave Canem, Idyllwild, and others. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Poetry, nocturnes, Pleiades, Callaloo, Fence, LA Review of Books, The Iowa Review, and The Ninth Letter. Raised in Altadena, California, he lives with his family in Santa Clarita Valley. He teaches at CalArts, where he received his MFA in Writing in 2004.
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Fear, SomePoemsFrom"Auto"
I feel I could eat women.
Driving alone, I’m hungry,
hawking bus stops and sidewalks.
Eyeballs grinding, I harden.
My mind, a bulging ice box.
My computer, a deep freeze.
The bingeing grows out of hand –
my wastebasket coughing up
the napkins hiding the bones.
Fear, Some:Poems -
Fear, SomePoemsFrom"Triptych: Kitchen"
batter
at first, Jemima didn’t make flapjacks like that.
once they were black as buckwheat
and a blackstrapped stack could crack
the brittle white dishes.
it wasn’t ‘til master spilled milk in her bowl
did she make those yellow things.
much easier to swallow.
Fear, Some:Poems -
Fear, SomePoemsFrom"The Poet Writes the Poem That Will Certainly Make Him Famous"
blackface is sometimes the truth
but with added emphasis. a boldface where
the smoldering cork testifies.
[the issue is intent, nahmean?
like what is nahmean when you see
knows its way around the alleys
of the tongue? what is nahmean, nahmean?
and the intent is the issue, you see?] [nahmean?]
blackface is sometimes a lie
but with added detail. a bold face where
the smoldering cork testifies.
Fear, Some:Poems
“Where, oh where would we be without the dynamic intelligence and feats of lyric daring that Douglas Kearney’s work has delivered to American poetry? The poems in Patter run back and forth through the realms of private interiority, popular culture, and the vast public arena of history, all the while re-inventing what the poetic line is capable of bearing and baring. Completely and un-ironically alive with genuine feeling, these are poems that are not afraid to say and show how we matter to one another.” —Tracy K. Smith
“Like textual Transformers assembled from segments of popular culture, music, urban history, and identity politics, Kearney's inventive poems challenge and beguile with surprising directness . . . A librettist, Kearney employs musical structures derived from blues, gospel, and rap while earnestly addressing difficult topics like the social construction of race and class . . . its verve, craft, and originality are undeniable.” —Library Journal [on The Black Automaton]
“Douglas Kearney’s innovative new collection makes me tremble like a ‘mouth and mind full of fish hooks.’ It makes me think of the despair at the heart of ecstasy; of restlessness as a kind of anodyne. These poems literally vibrate with Kearney’s precocious intellect and passion. They hum, they bang, they bite. This is a jaw-dropping, electrifying book. What else can I say? I have never encountered poetry like this before.” —Terrance Hayes [on The Black Automaton]
Selected Works
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