Scott Keeney is an American poet whose work moves through lyric compression, literary encounter, comic deflation, chance, fragments, and the afterlives of poetic tradition. His books include Sappho Does Hay(na)ku, Early Returns, Walloping Shrug, Pickpocket Poetica, Above the Surface, and Wahoo Sunset.
“Part (of a longer piece) (for Tom Clark)”
The Issue 22 poem begins with a farewell to poets and moves through Madonna, muddy bottoms, berry light, blue kisses, tambourines, darkness, water, and orgasm. Its compact stanzas operate through image and sonic pressure rather than explanatory narrative.
Meeting poets
Keeney’s later “On Meeting” poems imagine encounters with poets including John Ashbery, Charles Simic, Charles Wright, and Elizabeth Bishop. The poems combine admiration, parody, literary anecdote, invented dialogue, and questions about metaphor and poetic vocation.
Comic lyric and ordinary life
Recent poems continue to move easily between literary history and everyday objects: baseball cards, shopping lists, parking lots, dogs, jobs, and popular culture. Humor often destabilizes the elevated language of poetry while leaving genuine affection intact.
Further reading
Relegation Books publishes later poems and a current author note. failbetter and its companion pages preserve Keeney’s “On Meeting” sequence and an earlier bibliography.