All Told

<p>In <em>All Told</em> Mel Kenne traces the echoes of memory place and identity through vivid resonant verse. From the haunted landscapes of the American South to the shifting light of Istanbul these poems reckon with love loss and the fools we all become in pursuit of meaning. Kenne's language is sharp wry and wise and his reflections unforgettable.</p><p></p><p>Quizzical meditative wondering Mel Kenne's tone of voice marks him out as a true original and one with a delightfully wry sense of humor. Kenne also dispenses a fund of down-to-earth good sense something one does not always find in lyric poetry.</p><p>- John Ash on <em>Take</em></p><p></p><p>I love the quality of mind the unpretentious way of being in the world and reflecting on it in Mel Kenne's poems. He achieves a kind of expansiveness a sense of being unconstrained and totally himself...Like Whitman like Frank O'Hara he is eminently companionable and his presence on the page is somehow very reassuring in its acceptance of the human condition with in his words 'life's weight of joy uncertainty and grief.' </p><p>- Richard Tillinghast on <em>Take</em></p><p></p><p>Kenne does not grandstand the pathos of his situations but focuses the poem as a documentary on a range of ordinary events - waiting for buses or dawdling away an afternoon over aimless thoughts...or bickering with self over the purchase of a book of poems with his last five dollars.</p><p>- Paul Christensen on <em>Eating the Fruit</em></p><p></p><p>[Kenne's] voice-wise assured wry-can sometimes feel detached but by the time the poem sounds its last line it is clear that Kenne is passionately involved with his topic... Phantasmagorical elusive and possessed of a haunting beauty this poetry does what no ordinary prose-with its concerns for the straight-edged the clearly defined the pragmatic and encapsulated-can do and it does it without degenerating into the sort of gibberish so often tendered as 'avant-garde' verse.</p><p>- Vincent Czyz from Arts Fuse review of <em>Take</em></p><p></p><p>To read Mel Kenne is to come face-to-face with an original. Over the course of five decades he has been loyal to the Muse. This distillation of a life's work has finally arrived. It shows a mutual trust between the heart and the mind a rarity considering the state of much American poetry which seems to be all mind in its academic erudition. His poems are a joy to read and examine.</p><p>- Ken Fontenot winner of the 2012 Texas Institute of Letters award for best poetry book in Texas.</p>