The name of an unknown woman, found on a rejection slip left in an old library book, provides a starting place for Stephen Bett’s searching and profound examination of literature, society and politics. This is the first book of a poet with a strong and individual voice, which takes a precise measure of its own rhythms, and of the contemporary world.
Ordering Lucy Kent
- This book is out of print but can be ordered directly from the author while supplies last.
What Others Are Saying
“Poetry is the traditional research lab where language gets re-invented, but most people renounce their own poetry at an early age. In Lucy Kent… local poet Stephen Bett notes his admiration for Jackson Pollack’s method of painting, recalls an avant-garde artist who had himself crucified to a Volkswagon, then offers 17 sublime pleas to an unknown woman, Lucy Kent, whose name he has found on a rejection slip left inside an old library book. Making words dance across the page should not seem like a subversive act.”
—Alan Twigg, the Vancouver Province
“What strikes me most about Bett’s work— other than its sheer skill, clarity of tone, diction, line— is its unpretentiousness….his is an observant eye and a steady one, which plays close and thoughtful attention not only to the world but to the language.”
—Peter Quartermain
“…lively, irreverent, intelligent bold and original… the new Lucy Kent poems in the present collection are just marvellous; a splendid, ironic, satirical view of the New York art scene after World War II (in Frank O’Hara’s time).”
—Bill Truesdale