John R. Keene was born in St. Louis in 1965. He graduated from the St. Louis Priory School, Harvard College, and New York University, where he was a New York Times Fellow. In 1989, Mr. Keene joined the Dark Room Writers Collective, and is a Graduate Fellow of the Cave Canem Writers Workshops. He is the author of Annotations, and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer. Keene is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and a 2005 Whiting Award in Fiction and Poetry. He is an Associate Professor of English and African American and African Studies and a core faculty member in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Rutgers University-Newark.
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AnnotationsA NovelFrom"Cleansing, Through the Art of Remembering, A Renewal"
Daddy was often eager to play catch, since he felt society expected this from a loving, caring father. A confidence that soared and a glovehand that fell, still there was no baseball near either. Duplicity has killed more black men than gin. In a southpaw, what they appreciate most is this sort of "live arm." From his mouth words rushed like richly fed rapids, leaving him ever vulnerable to ascription.
Annotations:A Novel -
AnnotationsA NovelFrom"A Fathoming Beneath A Flourish of Notes, An Exegesis"
Desire, among other things, derives its force from repetition, or so your general pattern of behavior would lead you to believe. Neither parent had expected such a fragmented character, though they hid their disappointment beneath a flurry of activity. Ut natura poesis: autumn arrived to our wonderment, introduced by the river's murmur. Stands of birches, poplars, shuddered with delight, as the park glimmered with the embers of Indian summer. Carondelet.
Annotations:A Novel -
AnnotationsA NovelFrom"Theses, Antitheses, A Welter of Theories"
Trundling through the pass of bald maples across the valley of ice, he felt bound irrevocably to the outside world and to some inner, aspiring self. Schneeblick, so blink now. Daylight, reflecting off the soundless frostscape of the nursery, transformed his hands into two bars of franklinite. The early, wintry sunsets arrived, and then, although they waited, nothing. O soul, sublime subject of bodily subtraction, which the sky has entombed in all this whiteness. He cowered in fear of the implications of such thoughts, yet brazenly continued to think them.
Annotations:A Novel
“. . . a disguised autobiographical narrative whose power resides in formidable imagery and the virtuoso use of language . . . it should be read twice: once to get an idea of events and a second time to savor its language and pounding images.” —Library Journal [on Annotations]
“When I first read John Keene's fiction, almost a decade ago at Harvard, I knew immediately that I was in the presence of genius. With his work Annotations, Mr. Keene, after years of woodshedding and apprenticeships, has fulfilled that early promise. These poetic meditations about private lives and public events are brilliant, polished and of considerable depth.” —Ishmael Reed
“Annotations moves jaggedly, lightninglike, with speed and with wrought metonymic aplomb. It conduces to quick reaches of insight and accretion, unexpected lyric heft, quick elliptic dilation. In this book which achieves moment and range well beyond what its relative brevity leads one to expect, John Keene makes an auspicious debut.” —Nathaniel Mackey
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Bookshop
- The Song Cave
