Connotations

"This bold new collection by acclaimed Mohawk writer Maurice Kenny explores the interrelationship of life and art. The first section, "Lines on Canvas," looks at the work of famous artists, many of whom were homosexual, as reflections of their personal lives. Their art reveals the bitterness and agony of having to live secret lives, but it also reveals joy and beauty. The final poem in this section, a brilliant imagining of a conversation between the poet, the painter Camille Pissarro, and the island boy in a sketch by Pissarro, brings the flavor of the Caribbean islands vividly to life in an exquisite marriage of words and art. "Lines on Paper," the second section, a companion piece to Kenny's American Book Award-winning The Mama Poems, draws a portrait of the poet as a young man and his often difficult relationship with a father whose womanizing left a permanent scar on the poet's life. We see in these poems the love/hate relationship he had with a father who took him hunting and fishing and came to retrieve him and take him back home when he ran into difficulties, yet also treated his mother unkindly and showed little faith in his son's ability to have a successful life. It's through the art of writing that the poet is able to meld his father's two identities into a touching portrait of an ordinary man."--Jacket.