Ken Fontenot's fourth book of poems continues the fine balance of "things both practical and sublime" that he developed with subtlety and flare in his previous book, In a Kingdom of Birds-poems that explore the personal as well as the grander themes of life, with music presiding. "The songs of my time insist we listen attentively. / Take Fleetwood Mac. They incite, almost all melody, / which is the pie's filling, the alcohol in a mixed / drink."
Images of childhood (gathering eggs, his grandfather's tractor, butchering a hog) and wildlife (hummingbirds, hyenas, lions, snakes) share meditations with figures encountered during a learned life-Beethoven, Goethe, Shakespeare, Mahler, Brahms, Bruckner, Buddha, Whitman, Melville, Aristotle. "Mostly, / though, I would have wanted Boccherini's dates: / 1743-1805. Was it a great time to be alive? / Of course, the music itself seems to say so."
And throughout-he weighs and balances a lifetime of choices. "I wanted to have a distinct plan, yet it changed / as I changed. Even the pines were insightful. / And the cows returned to the barn in their slow way."
Poets on Ken Fontenot's In a Kingdom of Birds
"Fontenot's keen observation and original intelligence make his poetry well worth reading and a joy to examine ... southern regionalism combines with cosmopolitan sensitivity."-Harry de la Houssaye, Xavier Review
"For Fontenot, the act of reading is one such expression of that desire: 'Readers, after all, view the world most passionately- / as if their own lives were at stake.' And this stellar collection of Fontenot's mature years fully persuades, by its metaphorical and imagistic thinking, that our own lives are truly at stake."-Kurt Heinzelman, Borderlands
"Any reader's way of looking at and comprehending the world will be vastly expanded and improved by Fontenot's fresh and thought-provoking poems."-Dave Oliphant, Southwestern American Literature
