|
Raymond’s interest in literature began in the 5th grade at Carlile Elementary School in Pueblo, CO, with the reading and book report on Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. His interest in poetry began in college, with the tragedies of Shakespeare, and his introduction to the writing of Samuel Beckett. He was well instructed that dramas and novels can be just as poetic as poetry itself. He learned that poetry is the quickest, fullest and best way to express the truth with our fragile yet wondrous gift of language.
Raymond Keen was educated at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Oklahoma. He spent three years as a Navy clinical psychologist with a year in Vietnam (July 1967 – July 1968). Since that time he has worked as a school psychologist and licensed mental health counselor in the USA and overseas, until his retirement in 2006. He is a credentialed school psychologist in the states of California and Washington, and a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Washington. He is a Life Member of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). Raymond lives with his wife Kemme in Sahuarita, AZ. They have two grown children, Anne-Elise and Michael.
Love Poems for Cannibals is the author’s first volume of poetry. He is also the author of a drama, The Private and Public Life of King Able, which will be published in late 2013. Raymond’s poetry has been published in 24 literary journals.
In Love Poems for Cannibals, Raymond expresses the thoughts, feelings, quandaries and wonder of an American poet very much alive to the darkness and light of the 21st century. Written for educated adolescents and adults who are interested in current cultural, social, political and literary issues, this collection of poetry blazes with the passion, pain and complexity of the world in which we live.
As the reader moves through Love Poems for Cannibals, he/she will find poems of war (in this case Vietnam), poems dealing with current spiritual issues (Christianity, Buddhism, spiritual doubt and the soaring-singing human spirit), dysfunctional family relationships and feelings, portraits of great figures in contemporary human history presented with candor and wit, poems that rage against the omnipresence of human hypocrisy, and poems that present American/Western civilization under a glaring light – with the single redemptive quality that this author’s truth sings.
Raymond writes, “I was born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado. Back in my childhood of the 40’s and my adolescence during the 50’s, I believed in human greatness and human virtue. I had respect for authority, and believed that life was fundamentally fair and could be understood as a rational narrative. I believed that a human being could, through words, come close to expressing the truth, even if only a momentary fragment of this truth. I now realize that I may have been overly optimistic. Human verbal communication characteristically obscures the truth, as it covers the truth with the repetitive cliché. My poetry attempts to make that insight present and palpable and undeniable. Although I sometimes may succeed in getting through or beyond the cliché, I make no claims on truth.”
|
Share
Save
[