Featured Poet: Hugh Hennedy, Portsmouth
Hugh Hennedy began writing poetry when he was fifty. Until that time, he thought his writing gifts were mostly critical. Before 1979, he concentrated on writing for scholarly journals, articles on Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, and other English writers. His book on Anthony Trollope, Unity in Barsetshire, was published in 1971. A chapter of that book was republished by Harold Bloom in his Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers and the Warden: Modern Critical Interpretations, Chelsea House, 1988. After 1979, Hennedy has concentrated on the writing of poetry. His poems have been published in such journals as Puckerbrush Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Tar River Poetry, Hawaii Review, and James Joyce Quarterly. His books of poetry are: Old Winchester Hill, Enright House, 1993, and Halcyon Time, Oyster River Press, 1993. A new collection, "Variations on a Natural Theme," is forthcoming from Hobblebush Press, Spring, 2008. A New Englander by birth and inclination, Hennedy currently lives in Portsmouth.
Of his poem, Hugh writes:
"Some people might call where "Again in the Garden" got started a back yard rather than a garden. I was, after all, sitting in back of the house on the lawn under the old maple tree. And the fern and the fuchsia, the only plants in the poem are hanging from chains. But, I could reply, there were flowers bordering the lawn, though they are not explicitly in the poem. And "the garden" is not, finally so much a place as it is a state of being, the state our parents are said to have been in Eden for a while. It is that state that I set out to present when my poem got started.
Again in the Garden
Hanging from silver chains,
The fern and the fuchsia turn
To and away from each other
Like the gravest of dancers.
Leaves move in the breeze,
Willow and lilac and maple
And, beneath them, those
Of grass, while light and shade
Down there are mostly still.
Coming from some distance,
Traces of barking are,
If not golden, not
Brazen. The sun in the garden
Is warm and the voice of sparrows
Sweet as one brings seeds
To another and the fountain overflows again.
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