Review of ‘After The Six O’Clock News,’ Kemeny Babineau Poetry Book

After The Six O’Clock News,
Kemeny Babineau
Book Thug Publications
Toronto, Ontario 2009
It bears re-reading, this book of poems by Kemeny Babineau’s, ‘After The Six O’clock.’  Some bits just have a sense of rightness to them, that, ‘Of COURSE!’ feeling, like ‘ I care us ich,’  It’s been a long time since I felt the fun of a book like this one.  It is like the poems are standing on their heads or moving sidewise.  The Six O’clock news illustrates this perfectly with the blah blah blah of the slashes adding poignancy  and pattern to the poem.  The positioning of every poem is so nuanced and, well, perfect. Like the Krieghoff poem (and how it slides) and the facing page  with its page placement, as well. Oh Wow! you want to say, “The meaning in the poem is in the poem and on the poem. I spent quite a bit of time with Yellow Rain, Some Shine.  And the puns throughout – that includes the arrangment of the seasonal diet.  This book is the first time I have ever read the phrase, ‘jig of jostle,’ which linked in my mind with ‘Hairy Travis and the Ork Drow,’ which, until this writing, I hadn’t connected with a possible boy wizard.  I also found ‘pick a stone,’ very moving.
    Kemeny is teaching in this book, many courses by example – how to play with a poem, how to design and amuse, how to get serious in a completely new form, how even a few letters on a page in a non-traditional layout can make you understand the answers to questions you hadn’t before thought to ask.
    ‘After’ is well-bound and in its back-to-front-upsidedness, planned from the beginning to assault expectations, an assault on a word-Everest that makes the mind dance. A whole class can be taught on Suburban Agri-Culture Poem