Comments on Take

Quizzical, meditative, wondering, Mel Kenne's tone of voice marks him out as a true original, and one with a delightfully wry sense of humor. Kenne also dispenses a fund of down-to-earth good sense, something one does not always find in lyric poetry. In sum, Take is absorbing, accessible and thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end.

I love the quality of mind, the unpretentious way of being in the world and reflecting on it, in Mel Kenne's poems. He achieves a kind of expansiveness, a sense of being unconstrained and totally himself. By not being afraid to "abandon hope forever," he has found a hopefulness that his words convey, seemingly effortlessly, to us as readers. Like Whitman, like Frank O'Hara, he is eminently companionable, and his presence on the page is somehow very reassuring in its acceptance of the human condition with, in his words, "life's weight of joy, uncertainty, and grief."