Deborah Keenan • Kingdoms

Kingdoms is the seventh of Deborah Keenan's eight poetry collections. This book picks up some of the strands and themes present in Good Heart (Milkweed Editions, 2003), though she also heads off in some new directions. There are poems of memory and transformation, family portraits, and a set of poems contemplating the fate of certain animals and birds in our world. Some of the poems in Kingdoms also appear in Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems (Milkweed Editions), winner of a Minnesota Book Award in 2007.

About Deborah

Deborah is the author of eight collections of poetry. Her newest, Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems (Milkweed Editions) won Minnesota Book Award in 2007. Keenan teaches at Hamline University in St. Paul. In 2004 she was named professor of the year for teaching and service in the school's MFA and MALS graduate programs.

So Much Like a Beach After All

Turn the alley sideways, running north to south.

Remove the houses on the south side of the alley.

Remove the years of cobblestones, tar, small stones.

See for quite a distance, knowing the water

Is just out of sight. Take a chair to the alley

Which is no Ionger an alley but a strip

Of ancient beach which your beautifui imagination

Has made. Sit in your chair and listen

For the waves.

From Kingdoms, by Deborah Keenan

Deborah on Writing Poetry

I write my poems and make my art to express a certain kind of hopefulness about life on the beautiful, damaged earth. The act of making, for me, signals a belief in the idea of a future worth having.

From The Double Meaning of Yield: Laurel Poets on Writing Poetry