Poet Neil C. Kennedy is publishing his first collection of poems with Finishing Line Press in September. (The collection can now be pre-ordered.)

Neil Kennedy and connected through our mutual publications in the Winter 2019 issue of The Orchards. His poem, “When Juliet”, just six lines long, was one I admired in my post on the issue (in which I, too, had a short poem, called “Happy Hour”.) (The link to that issue of The Orchards is HERE, in case you would like to read Kennedy’s earlier poem!)

Recently, I had the chance to read the proof of his new book, and it is dazzling, filled with connected gems, little flashes of lyrical and narrative insight that add up to some even greater than the sum of its small pieces, something as quiet and monumental as a library filled with books, or an epic novel penned on Post-It notes.

Here is a blurb from the manuscript of the book: Neil Kennedy’s new book, A Jigsaw Puzzle is like no other book of poetry I have ever read. From the very beginning – Flower on the floor./Somebody has lost their bloom./I am very careful. – Kennedy pulls you in, though really, as with any jigsaw puzzle, you can enter anywhere and find yourself unable to stop being enchanted by this world that gets put together one tercet at a time. Birds of all species, one chickadee setting up its home into two birdhouses, music from next door, problematic snow, little Jesus at the gas station, hourglasses, cats and dogs, timepieces and shoelaces, software malfunctions in the forgiveness machine, hammer and teacup going home together, hesitating clouds deciding whether to cast shadows or not, daffodils breaching their contract, card catalogue in the junkyard with one drawer open – this poignantly quiet rhythm and boldly observant eye unfold a landscape that is defined often by the spaces between places and moments in time. In one of the occasional breaks of the tercet form the poet writes “Behind one man’s voice” and then then there’s space and then “Another man’s voice.” In the poems to which we turn for insight and illumination we often sense poet and shadow self, the two voices talking to each other and including us in the conversation. Kennedy’s A Jigsaw Puzzle, offers you a conversation to which you will want to return again and again.

–Christopher Bursk, author of The Improbable Swervings of Atoms.

 Neil Kennedy is a poet and librarian. He holds an AA in Liberal Arts, a BA in English Literature, an MFA in Creative Writing, and an MS in Library Science. After completing his MFA, Kennedy took a space of time away from poetry; Jigsaw Puzzle is his first new collection, and is influenced by his work in libraries. He says, “My two big loves are books and animals, or as I like to think of them, Literature and Nature. American Haiku is the perfect form in which to combine them.” Kennedy, who lives outside Philadelphia, considers the northeast as his natural habitat both ecologically and culturally. In addition to literature and nature, he loves visual art, and is an admirer of several contemporary visual artists active in the Philadelphia area, as well as of the art history of rural and suburban Pennsylvania.