In the beginning was the opening poem to Joseph Kidney’s debut poetry collection, Devotional Forensics, which starts “I have never known who does the letting / in such commands as let there be light” (11). Is it a boss move to open your first book with an allusion to the most pivotal moment in the Christian creation story? Is that starting things off with a bang? OK, OK, I think that’s enough. Even though my sloppily deployed opening reference in this review was to the Gospel of John and the lines I quoted of Kidney’s poem references Genesis, Devotional Forensics isn’t short on references to religion (both the idea of religion as well as various major religious groups), so I figure it’s fair game. Almost everything is on the playing field in Joseph Kidney’s poetry, actually, and the smart collection of disparate ideas and references makes this debut enjoyable as all hell.
In a glowing review for The Miramichi Reader, James Dunnigan also identifies the inherent religiosity of Kidney’s poetry: “Every one of his verses shines with a radiance you can’t tell whether divine or demonic.” As much as Kidney finds inspiration in literal trash, many poems in Devotional Forensics are in conversation with high art, especially from the time when Christianity was intrinsically linked with the subjects (and creation) of new works of poetry. The author’s relationship with religion is not straightforward, though, as evidenced in the third section of “The History of Air” (which also contains a reference to the title of the book) when Kidney admits, “I used to pray to God / to give him confidence: I believe you, / I believe in you. Not so much anymore” (55). The admission of the speaker’s agnosticism is evident before the reader arrives at it, especially if the reader has clocked the lowercase masculine pronoun when referring to God. The same poem moves swiftly into more garbage (“Styrofoam varnished / with cling wrap. Moth-eaten moths” (55)) and grotesque bodily description. Kidney never wastes time moving to a new subject.
I’d like to take a note from Kidney and move away from biblical references to break things down into numerical data now: Devotional Forensics is a 96-page book with 37 poems split up between 6 sections. This breakdown may only be remarkable if you recognize that 37 poems isn’t a very high number of poems for a 96-page book. But you should also know that 5 poems have multiple parts (at least 3 parts or movements or what have you [in “Dove or Kestrel” (29), “The History of Air” (52), & “Nephron Lunaire” (69)] and at most 8 [“Carvings: Eight Pieces for Bull and Orchestra” (63)]). There’s also a “Notes” section that spills onto a second page, which is relatively unusual for a book of poetry. Now, if I could tell you the word count of this book of poems, that would really paint a clearer picture of Devotional Forensics; Kidney is a fine craftsman of a romp of a poem, but whether or not a short, imagistic poem (à la Nelson Ball or Larry Eigner) is in his toolbag, this collection doesn’t trot any out. These are mainly wordy, indulgent poems, welcoming with humour and self-deprecation, and still tight enough to keep a reader bouncing along.
Before wrapping up, I’d like to get to a moment that had me bouncing while reading this collection. In a later section of Kidney’s book, the poem “Nephron Lunaire” introduces a character, “Nephron,” who the poem describes as “Repulsive” (69) and generally an annoying kinda figure: “Inside voice, outside voice, / it’s all the same to him” (69). The appearance of this persona is, I’m assuming, an in-joke and a way for Joseph Kidney to bring self-awareness and self-deprecation into his poems without overtly talking about himself. My assumptions about this character are informed by following the author on social media and thusly having an awareness of Joseph Kidney’s fairly memorable Instagram handle, “zacnephron,” which I had previously believed was (and still somewhat hold onto as) a play on the name of the High School Musical actor, Zac Efron. It was only upon Googling “nephron” just now that I learned of the actual function of nephron in the kidney, and, so, I can emphasize again that the author of Devotional Forensics is constantly composing verse that can contain meaning on multiple levels.
In his review for the Washington Independent Review Of Books, Shane Neilson calls Kidney’s book “a debut of linguistic ambition,” which makes for a good line. Neilson compares Devotional Forensics with Karen Solie, one of Canada’s finest living poets, and the advertising copy for this book further emphasizes Kidney’s influences from John Ashbery, Anne Carson, and Shakespeare. This shouldn’t discourage potential readers who aren’t as well read as Kidney, though. Regardless of whether Kidney is referencing Augustine’s doctrine of deification, German fairy tales, classical music, or a waste incinerator in Vienna, Austria, I’d just say the book is darn fun!