Peter Valente
Paradise Now: On Evan Kennedy’s Terra Firmament (Krupskaya, 2013)
"I’ve a second skeleton contoured as my first but finer-tuned
to self-preservation and armistice within a topography at turns
vicious and fortuitous. San Francisco becomes the site wherein
I negotiate a haven while keeping steady in my three bodies--
my poet’s, my queer’s, my cyclist’s bodies…."
Evan Kennedy is essentially a metaphysical poet, who is concerned with the meaning of paradise for our present world, the frailty of the human body in its present state of revolt, and the problem of power relations between people. He suggests that the present body is in a process of evolution to a spiritual form, but that paradise should not be seen as something beyond, in some transcendent space, but rather as present in potentia here on earth. He is militant, but it’s the militancy of holy men and saints, that is, for Kennedy, it takes the shape of an intense devotion (to poetry), and to a kind of metaphysics of the terrestrial.
His book of poems, Terra Firmament, is nothing less than messianic; there is a hopefulness in this poetry which is refreshing in an age where the growing apathy of our times threatens to engulf us all. Remaining hopeful requires more inner strength and is preferable to wallowing in sadness or launching forth in confused anger. To remain hopeful is a revolutionary act. Kennedy also cultivated a concept of what he calls bonhomie, as a way of understanding the state of our present “community” of poets; it is “a type of fragility…which is less sterile than solidarity and more radical than friendship. It flies in the face of Nihilist-Leftist perspectives that cannot even utter terms like ‘goodwill.’”[1] Not to mention the fierce competition that infects the poetry scene today, and the resentment and jealousies that spring up as a result. It’s a thankless task being a poet. So I think Kennedy’s message of bonhomie is crucial in fighting against the pricks, even if these are other poets, and developing a community that is more unified, where people are more supportive of each other.
Kennedy writes, “I’ve found / it crucial to stay / hopeful through my / remaining nerves // since I’ve been known / to bloom / from the peril / I’ve taken; / since I’ve been known / to thus create worth…..I self-preserve by a fiercer passivity, kind of like a sissy (Francis of)” This “fiercer passivity” is a heroic stance to take as a gay man in this present world, with the LGBT community facing attacks from the Right almost daily under the present administration. Furthermore, he writes: “I’ve found it humbling when I cannot muscle through but must take that meeker route, efface myself in failure.” There is a passage in St. Francis which speaks of such humility:
How much interior patience and humility a servant of God may have cannot be
known so long as he is contented. But when the time comes that those who ought
to please him go against him, as much patience and humility as he then shows,
so much has he and no more.
Such a stance is needed in the poetry world today. We must fight against those who want to kill the dreamers and stifle the imagination of the ones who fight to create an alternative world. It is interesting to find this statement from the 911 Commission Report with regard to the accuracy of implementing strategic plans in times of war, “It is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination.” The word “Revolution” is, in many ways, so loaded with the past, and the memory of the failures of the generation to ‘68 to actualize their plans for a new world.[2] How can we hope to rejuvenate the word for our time? Even if only for ourselves? By radicalizing the body and mind in relation to the political and social space. To reverse the systems that order our world. It was something I imagine Foucault was aware of when he wrote:
We must uncover our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tied to
our bourgeois way of life; it is good – and that is the real theater – to transcend them
in the manner of play, by means of games and irony; it is good to be dirty and bearded,
to have long hair, to look like a girl when one is a boy (and vice versa); one must put
“in play,” show up, transform and reverse the systems which quietly order us about.
And such a point of view, we will find, is not incompatible with the view expressed by St. Francis of Assisi.
Paradise as it’s written in the Judeo-Christian scripture rejects the admittance of a queer body in Paradise, which causes Kennedy to revolt:
I’ve this idea that telling the dead to do this / do that has gotten stale, that I should
cut straight to requesting paradise now and add #dodgingriotcops to the itemization
of my instincts – as it’s a written paradise to soon distend me, in the way I distended
time when flipped over my handlebars, or set my tear-gassed anatomy to regaining
lung capacity
undercover agitators persist
alongside the wild,
I mean the tender wild that
consign death
and other things
of that ilk to the past
The homosexual has no place in the conventional view of paradise, a paradise understood as otherworldly, a kind of gated community for only straight, white, heterosexual men and women. A paradise that has failed to actualize on earth, in the present, will persist as an idea, an abstraction, that could potentially align with Rightist ideas, as when homosexuality is seen as a “mental illness,” and destructive to “Christian family values.” Kennedy speaks of a “paradise that would admit me – such would be my demand; a paradise now and eradication of illness and no more dying, that there will be no more labor henceforth but cycling,” ; this involves “harmonizing against the aggression of my surroundings” to “build a garden of many pleasing species.” This is a human paradise. A terrestrial paradise. But where politics focuses on the world in its present form, Kennedy alters the frame of perception to envision something wilder, less “real,” less possible in actuality even, but nevertheless more inclusive and less divisive, and this is the nature of revolutionary desire and why we need it today rather than more lies about a progressive future or empty slogans like “Make America Great.”
In part III of Terra Firmament, entitled “Beat Pig on Folsom,” Kennedy writes:
I ask my piggy pal isn’t paradise vicious,
I ask my doggy pal isn’t our sweat a bit thicker and that of the other fluids and isn’t it good
for our native country that they think we’re degenerate.
we have a rich name that marks the center of a victory, however peripheral; what I mean
here is we’ve the opportunity for gentility amidst gestures of other’s cruelty imposed onto
us, and a degree of literacy for the shorthand of sensation that is this.
vibrations of color, citations toward joy,
which bodies are chosen to paradise –
and from then on a suitable place beyond these bounds
but still cyclable within these bounds;
aligning myself, I mention those who precede me
to inherit their troubles toward that fugitive territory.
The music of these lines is older, closer to the metaphysical poets; there is an unpretentious clarity and precision that reminds me of the metaphysical poet, George Herbert. Watching the video on YouTube of Kennedy reading at the Poetry Project, the immediate thing that you notice is that he not reading from a book. But his reading is not improvised. He stamps his foot occasionally to a private rhythm; his body responds to the language; it doesn’t feel like “poetry” directed at an audience; it is more like a transgressive sermon; the barrier between speaker and audience breaks down so that intimacy can be felt between them. This is also not performance art in the traditional sense. This is what I would call urban messianic art. That’s why it was strange seeing the words printed on the page. These are not words to be read, but spoken out in a community of like-minded individuals, as in a protest, firm but tender. Here’s St. Francis on the subject of false learning and the importance of “word” and “example”:
The Apostle says, “the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth.” They are killed by the letter
who seek only to know the words that they may be esteemed more learned among others
and that they may acquire great riches to leave to their relations and friends. And those
religious are killed by the letter who will not follow the spirit of the Holy Scriptures,
but who seek rather to know the words only and to interpret them to others. And
they are quickened by the spirit of the Holy Scriptures who do not interpret materially
every text they know or wish to know, but who by word and example give them back
to God from whom is all good.
Kennedy sees himself as part of a tradition of subversion and rebellion. He is fighting the good fight. He questions the nature of our accepted versions of reality and humanity, and consequently suffers in maintaining “this soul of mine / in the clothes it chose.” The body, in its corporeal form, is limited, where the soul is unbounded. So our perception must be transformed to see through its eyes, to open the doors of perception to see the infinite, as Blake reminded us. For Kennedy, the infinite can be realized in the terra firmament.
The final poem in Terra Firmament is a kind of requiem, where Kennedy achieves a gentle and meditative tone:
I tried and meant it
a terra firmament,
tried and meant it
a paradise enough,
so kept tough
but lenient,
I tried and meant
this however
uncountried,
and adapted to
that culture of one
A “culture of one” is to be understood in a metaphysical sense, but grounded in the reality of daily living. This is a politics of the spirit. St. Francis was attentive to the traces of God in all of creation, and this required a transformation in thought and imagination, to become, as it were, an aspect of divine love; open to being vulnerable, this is a love that makes room for that which is radically other than itself. St. Francis of Assisi saw everything in creation—every bird, every flower, every plant, every blade of grass, every animal, every worm—as a marvelous and individual object of wonder. His mind was not cluttered by ambition and a lust for power. He was openhearted and generous. Over the past decades, too much blood has been spilt in the name of ideology; think of the German and Italian scene in the 70s, the Red Brigade in Italy, and the RAF in Germany, which showed that populist revolutions based on ideological positions, could veer into terrorist actions if unchecked or unquestioned. Violence breeds violence as Alex says in A Clockwork Orange. Our current president’s fanatical concern with the military and war, weaves just the kind of the narrative that stokes the fires of Nationalism and demonizes the immigrant, the homosexual, and all those that he has an interest in keeping marginalized. Our political scene is a spectacle on the order of some deranged MGM production of the 30s, with a full supporting cast of lunatics and greedy financiers, and with a madman at the helm of a sinking ship of State. But Kennedy urges us to focus our attention elsewhere, and we see that St. Francis of Assisi also has much to tell us about our present world and the nature of revolutionary desire. Here’s Kittredge Cherry writing on St. Francis:
Historical records reveal a queer side to Saint Francis of Assisi, one of the most beloved
religious figures of all time. The 13th-century friar is celebrated for loving animals,
hugging lepers, embracing poverty and praying for peace, but few know about his
love for another man and his gender nonconformity. Francis is “a uniquely
gender-bending historic figure” according to Franciscan scholar Kevin Elphick.
His extravagant love crossed boundaries. Other Franciscan friars referred to
Francis as “Mother” during his lifetime. He encouraged his friars to be mothers
to each other when in hermitage together, and used other gender-bending
metaphors to describe the spiritual life.
He experienced a vision of an all-female Trinity, who in turn saluted him as “Lady Poverty,”
a title that he welcomed. Francis allowed a widow to enter the male-only cloister,
naming her “Brother Jacoba.” His partner in ministry was a woman, Clare of Assisi,
and he cut her hair in a man’s tonsured style when she joined his male-only religious order.
Evan Kennedy’s Terra Firmament is a book for our times but it is also a book that transcends our time in harkening back to the figure of St. Francis, and the tradition of the great 17th century metaphysical poets. He is a pagan who conceives of paradise not in some “beyond” but present here on earth. He will demand his place in this paradise only if it is stripped of the injunction against homosexuals in Judeo-Christian doctrine. He revitalizes the term “degenerate,” giving it a positive meaning; it is these very people who are considered “outcasts” who can cultivate themselves, and preserve their dignity, apart from the ugliness of the present world, and as dandies can demand that paradise actualize now. Evan Kennedy has done the work, and can be trusted to lead us to the treasure hidden in the dark.
[1] David Brazil, Jackqueline Frost, & Evan Kennedy by Thom Donovan, BOMB, Apr 17, 2014.
to self-preservation and armistice within a topography at turns
vicious and fortuitous. San Francisco becomes the site wherein
I negotiate a haven while keeping steady in my three bodies--
my poet’s, my queer’s, my cyclist’s bodies…."
Evan Kennedy is essentially a metaphysical poet, who is concerned with the meaning of paradise for our present world, the frailty of the human body in its present state of revolt, and the problem of power relations between people. He suggests that the present body is in a process of evolution to a spiritual form, but that paradise should not be seen as something beyond, in some transcendent space, but rather as present in potentia here on earth. He is militant, but it’s the militancy of holy men and saints, that is, for Kennedy, it takes the shape of an intense devotion (to poetry), and to a kind of metaphysics of the terrestrial.
His book of poems, Terra Firmament, is nothing less than messianic; there is a hopefulness in this poetry which is refreshing in an age where the growing apathy of our times threatens to engulf us all. Remaining hopeful requires more inner strength and is preferable to wallowing in sadness or launching forth in confused anger. To remain hopeful is a revolutionary act. Kennedy also cultivated a concept of what he calls bonhomie, as a way of understanding the state of our present “community” of poets; it is “a type of fragility…which is less sterile than solidarity and more radical than friendship. It flies in the face of Nihilist-Leftist perspectives that cannot even utter terms like ‘goodwill.’”[1] Not to mention the fierce competition that infects the poetry scene today, and the resentment and jealousies that spring up as a result. It’s a thankless task being a poet. So I think Kennedy’s message of bonhomie is crucial in fighting against the pricks, even if these are other poets, and developing a community that is more unified, where people are more supportive of each other.
Kennedy writes, “I’ve found / it crucial to stay / hopeful through my / remaining nerves // since I’ve been known / to bloom / from the peril / I’ve taken; / since I’ve been known / to thus create worth…..I self-preserve by a fiercer passivity, kind of like a sissy (Francis of)” This “fiercer passivity” is a heroic stance to take as a gay man in this present world, with the LGBT community facing attacks from the Right almost daily under the present administration. Furthermore, he writes: “I’ve found it humbling when I cannot muscle through but must take that meeker route, efface myself in failure.” There is a passage in St. Francis which speaks of such humility:
How much interior patience and humility a servant of God may have cannot be
known so long as he is contented. But when the time comes that those who ought
to please him go against him, as much patience and humility as he then shows,
so much has he and no more.
Such a stance is needed in the poetry world today. We must fight against those who want to kill the dreamers and stifle the imagination of the ones who fight to create an alternative world. It is interesting to find this statement from the 911 Commission Report with regard to the accuracy of implementing strategic plans in times of war, “It is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination.” The word “Revolution” is, in many ways, so loaded with the past, and the memory of the failures of the generation to ‘68 to actualize their plans for a new world.[2] How can we hope to rejuvenate the word for our time? Even if only for ourselves? By radicalizing the body and mind in relation to the political and social space. To reverse the systems that order our world. It was something I imagine Foucault was aware of when he wrote:
We must uncover our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tied to
our bourgeois way of life; it is good – and that is the real theater – to transcend them
in the manner of play, by means of games and irony; it is good to be dirty and bearded,
to have long hair, to look like a girl when one is a boy (and vice versa); one must put
“in play,” show up, transform and reverse the systems which quietly order us about.
And such a point of view, we will find, is not incompatible with the view expressed by St. Francis of Assisi.
Paradise as it’s written in the Judeo-Christian scripture rejects the admittance of a queer body in Paradise, which causes Kennedy to revolt:
I’ve this idea that telling the dead to do this / do that has gotten stale, that I should
cut straight to requesting paradise now and add #dodgingriotcops to the itemization
of my instincts – as it’s a written paradise to soon distend me, in the way I distended
time when flipped over my handlebars, or set my tear-gassed anatomy to regaining
lung capacity
undercover agitators persist
alongside the wild,
I mean the tender wild that
consign death
and other things
of that ilk to the past
The homosexual has no place in the conventional view of paradise, a paradise understood as otherworldly, a kind of gated community for only straight, white, heterosexual men and women. A paradise that has failed to actualize on earth, in the present, will persist as an idea, an abstraction, that could potentially align with Rightist ideas, as when homosexuality is seen as a “mental illness,” and destructive to “Christian family values.” Kennedy speaks of a “paradise that would admit me – such would be my demand; a paradise now and eradication of illness and no more dying, that there will be no more labor henceforth but cycling,” ; this involves “harmonizing against the aggression of my surroundings” to “build a garden of many pleasing species.” This is a human paradise. A terrestrial paradise. But where politics focuses on the world in its present form, Kennedy alters the frame of perception to envision something wilder, less “real,” less possible in actuality even, but nevertheless more inclusive and less divisive, and this is the nature of revolutionary desire and why we need it today rather than more lies about a progressive future or empty slogans like “Make America Great.”
In part III of Terra Firmament, entitled “Beat Pig on Folsom,” Kennedy writes:
I ask my piggy pal isn’t paradise vicious,
I ask my doggy pal isn’t our sweat a bit thicker and that of the other fluids and isn’t it good
for our native country that they think we’re degenerate.
we have a rich name that marks the center of a victory, however peripheral; what I mean
here is we’ve the opportunity for gentility amidst gestures of other’s cruelty imposed onto
us, and a degree of literacy for the shorthand of sensation that is this.
vibrations of color, citations toward joy,
which bodies are chosen to paradise –
and from then on a suitable place beyond these bounds
but still cyclable within these bounds;
aligning myself, I mention those who precede me
to inherit their troubles toward that fugitive territory.
The music of these lines is older, closer to the metaphysical poets; there is an unpretentious clarity and precision that reminds me of the metaphysical poet, George Herbert. Watching the video on YouTube of Kennedy reading at the Poetry Project, the immediate thing that you notice is that he not reading from a book. But his reading is not improvised. He stamps his foot occasionally to a private rhythm; his body responds to the language; it doesn’t feel like “poetry” directed at an audience; it is more like a transgressive sermon; the barrier between speaker and audience breaks down so that intimacy can be felt between them. This is also not performance art in the traditional sense. This is what I would call urban messianic art. That’s why it was strange seeing the words printed on the page. These are not words to be read, but spoken out in a community of like-minded individuals, as in a protest, firm but tender. Here’s St. Francis on the subject of false learning and the importance of “word” and “example”:
The Apostle says, “the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth.” They are killed by the letter
who seek only to know the words that they may be esteemed more learned among others
and that they may acquire great riches to leave to their relations and friends. And those
religious are killed by the letter who will not follow the spirit of the Holy Scriptures,
but who seek rather to know the words only and to interpret them to others. And
they are quickened by the spirit of the Holy Scriptures who do not interpret materially
every text they know or wish to know, but who by word and example give them back
to God from whom is all good.
Kennedy sees himself as part of a tradition of subversion and rebellion. He is fighting the good fight. He questions the nature of our accepted versions of reality and humanity, and consequently suffers in maintaining “this soul of mine / in the clothes it chose.” The body, in its corporeal form, is limited, where the soul is unbounded. So our perception must be transformed to see through its eyes, to open the doors of perception to see the infinite, as Blake reminded us. For Kennedy, the infinite can be realized in the terra firmament.
The final poem in Terra Firmament is a kind of requiem, where Kennedy achieves a gentle and meditative tone:
I tried and meant it
a terra firmament,
tried and meant it
a paradise enough,
so kept tough
but lenient,
I tried and meant
this however
uncountried,
and adapted to
that culture of one
A “culture of one” is to be understood in a metaphysical sense, but grounded in the reality of daily living. This is a politics of the spirit. St. Francis was attentive to the traces of God in all of creation, and this required a transformation in thought and imagination, to become, as it were, an aspect of divine love; open to being vulnerable, this is a love that makes room for that which is radically other than itself. St. Francis of Assisi saw everything in creation—every bird, every flower, every plant, every blade of grass, every animal, every worm—as a marvelous and individual object of wonder. His mind was not cluttered by ambition and a lust for power. He was openhearted and generous. Over the past decades, too much blood has been spilt in the name of ideology; think of the German and Italian scene in the 70s, the Red Brigade in Italy, and the RAF in Germany, which showed that populist revolutions based on ideological positions, could veer into terrorist actions if unchecked or unquestioned. Violence breeds violence as Alex says in A Clockwork Orange. Our current president’s fanatical concern with the military and war, weaves just the kind of the narrative that stokes the fires of Nationalism and demonizes the immigrant, the homosexual, and all those that he has an interest in keeping marginalized. Our political scene is a spectacle on the order of some deranged MGM production of the 30s, with a full supporting cast of lunatics and greedy financiers, and with a madman at the helm of a sinking ship of State. But Kennedy urges us to focus our attention elsewhere, and we see that St. Francis of Assisi also has much to tell us about our present world and the nature of revolutionary desire. Here’s Kittredge Cherry writing on St. Francis:
Historical records reveal a queer side to Saint Francis of Assisi, one of the most beloved
religious figures of all time. The 13th-century friar is celebrated for loving animals,
hugging lepers, embracing poverty and praying for peace, but few know about his
love for another man and his gender nonconformity. Francis is “a uniquely
gender-bending historic figure” according to Franciscan scholar Kevin Elphick.
His extravagant love crossed boundaries. Other Franciscan friars referred to
Francis as “Mother” during his lifetime. He encouraged his friars to be mothers
to each other when in hermitage together, and used other gender-bending
metaphors to describe the spiritual life.
He experienced a vision of an all-female Trinity, who in turn saluted him as “Lady Poverty,”
a title that he welcomed. Francis allowed a widow to enter the male-only cloister,
naming her “Brother Jacoba.” His partner in ministry was a woman, Clare of Assisi,
and he cut her hair in a man’s tonsured style when she joined his male-only religious order.
Evan Kennedy’s Terra Firmament is a book for our times but it is also a book that transcends our time in harkening back to the figure of St. Francis, and the tradition of the great 17th century metaphysical poets. He is a pagan who conceives of paradise not in some “beyond” but present here on earth. He will demand his place in this paradise only if it is stripped of the injunction against homosexuals in Judeo-Christian doctrine. He revitalizes the term “degenerate,” giving it a positive meaning; it is these very people who are considered “outcasts” who can cultivate themselves, and preserve their dignity, apart from the ugliness of the present world, and as dandies can demand that paradise actualize now. Evan Kennedy has done the work, and can be trusted to lead us to the treasure hidden in the dark.
[1] David Brazil, Jackqueline Frost, & Evan Kennedy by Thom Donovan, BOMB, Apr 17, 2014.
