Age of Wonders

Lawrence Kessenich is a poet of honesty and heart, and a fine literary craftsman. I read everything he writes and eagerly anticipate new work from him. Kessenich is a keen observer of the quotidian, particularly strong on family, marriage, and parenting. When his subject is mortality, stillness falls on the page and his poems open into immensities. David Payne, author of Barefoot to Avalon and award-winning novelist Thematically arranged in four sections, Age of Wonders, offers readers a quiet elegance and meditative beauty through intimate treatments of the larger universe. These are poems of people, place, and self-realization-poems in which the collective spirit is met with respect and sensitivity. Lawrence Kessenich brings us ‘ … a rich, perplexing world that cannot be reduced to obedience and self-denial, any more than a rose bush can be told when to bloom and in what color.’ As the poet continues, ‘rim us too severely and we grow back twice as large, thrice as bright.’ This book is a ‘thrice as bright’ witness to what being human means. Adele Kenny, Poetry Editor, Tiferet Journal There is a beautiful sense of acceptance in Lawrence Kessenich’s poems. The acceptance that we will all get hurt, we all will get lost along the way, and that we will continue to have nagging doubts, all of which we learn from. Through his alchemy of words we slow down and hear our own breath. Kessenich’s poems are profoundly meditative, insightful, evocative and accessible. I highly recommend this new and accomplished collection. Doug Holder, Winner of the Allen Ginsberg Literary Community Contribution Award