Anesthesia: Poems
“Fries’s poems, classical in feel, evoke through dramatic empathy a relaxed, sensual detachment both exacting and diffuse—like a reflection in an old mercury glass. His greatest gifts reside in the spare measure of his language, the naturalness of his rhythms, and his unflinching blending of personal myth and real bone.”
Anesthesia: Poems
Kenny Fries
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Including The Healing Notebooks, winner of the Gregory Kolovakos Award for AIDS Writing
Finalist, Lambda Literary Award in Poetry
"What is the relationship between the poet's body and his poetic corpus? This is the question Kenny Fries examines. He has formed out of his physical self a body of poetry of classical proportions, and in his sequence of poems in homage to Claude Monet, he has shown how the commitment to realism is, in fact, an incitement to the transforming power of love and the protean nature of the world." — David Bergman, editor of Men on Men.
"In a deftly orchestrated collection, Kenny Fries brings to light a complex awareness of his history as a Jew, and as a gay man physically disabled at birth. Tough-minded and sparely written, the poems take their source from a clear and calm intelligence that projects an aura of affirmation in the face of suffering and loss. Fries is not content with the merely personal; his work spins into wider worlds. Anesthesia marks a new depth and range in this gifted young poet’s career." — Colette Inez
Praise for The Healing Notebooks
“This is no ordinary love story. Fries has recorded all the forward, backward and sideways movements we make as we struggle with despair and hope, denial and fear, the unanswerable questions of an epidemic. These poems become tools which can help us survive.”
—Ruth L. Schwartz, San Francisco Bay Times
“Mythic in their simplicity and grace, these poems wail a Kaddish, originating from what Fries calls ‘The rituals of the worried well.’ I cannot imagine more deeply felt and lovingly crafted poems.”
—Jeffery Beam, Small Press Review
“Kenny Fries has listened carefully and memorized the expression on another man’s face. An urgent and compassionate awareness.”
—Sarah Schulman