Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death

Christopher Kennedy’s poetry is funny, deadpan, self-effacing, and revelatory in the way of a man with nothing to lose. Mixing sonnets and prose poems, Kennedy lampoons the absurdities of contemporary American life using ironic fables and surreal parables. Kennedy’s poems also reflect his obsession with the idea of transformation—from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from life to death.

Christopher Kennedy is director of the Syracuse University MFA Program in Creative Writing. He has received writing awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation. This is his third full-length poetry collection.