The Urgency of the Writer: Thomas E. Kennedy, 1944–2021: In Memoria
Robert Stewart | November 2021
Robert Stewart
Thomas E. Kennedy had been known to me chiefly as a writer of prose—fiction and essays, short and long, over thirty books in all—so the day he and I stood together in the rain in Frederiksberg Gardens, in Tom’s adopted Copenhagen, Denmark, to read from under our umbrellas during Poetry Day 2006, I was not prepared for Tom’s opening poem, which he later described as “aggressive,” and which began thus: “What is it most you want me not to say?” He said many things then and throughout his work about war and love, torture, and rehabilitation, often with humor, and sometimes with overt urgency: “What if I scream it hard and ugly?” Of course, many prose writers write poems too, but Tom showed me daring, insistent verse that could have been his primary form.
That got me foraging with some futility among my already-sodden pages for a poem to approach the confrontational energy he’d sent out among the lush glades. “Danes don’t shock,” he said in the essay he wrote that night, after the event. “They smile. They laugh. They love it.” So this may be, in part, the reason Tom chose Copenhagen as home for over forty years, after moving first from New York to France, then to Copenhagen in 1976 for a job with the International Department of the Danish Medical Association. The Danes might seem soft spoken, generous, and gracious, which they are; but they are also tenacious, fearless, and resilient; all of which—the whole character-driven package—could define Thomas E. Kennedy.
During that August, Tom took me and my soon-to-be-wife, Lisa, to Rosengårds Bodega, one of the serving houses he described in his novel Kerrigan in Copenhagen (Bloomsbury), one of Tom’s Copenhagen Quartet. Denmark was occupied—to use that conventional understatement—by the Nazis in the early 1940s; the bodega was the real-life setting where three Danish resistance fighters assassinated a patron, whom Tom referred to as a “Gestapo snitch” The bar’s owner, Niels Erik Nielsen, moved aside a box of candles on a shelf to show us an extant bullet hole from the day; we could see a long groove made by another bullet as it had skipped across the wooden surface of the bar.
Such experiences resulted in essays that Tom often wrote within twenty-four hours. Make that six.
“If you want more of the story,” said the owner, Niels, “come back Friday about this time and talk to one of the three who did it. He is always here then.” The essay Tom wrote about our meeting with that eighty-one-year-old man, who was still known mainly by his nickname, “Sleepy,” is called “Liquidation of a Horse Thief.” It appeared in The Literary Explorer series, which Tom coedited with Walter Cummins, on Web del Sol.
Such experiences resulted in essays that Tom often wrote within twenty-four hours. Make that six. Lisa and I, both writers, have come to swear by “The Rule of Kennedy” as we call it, when we have had a notable experience. The rule says, don’t wait. “Remember what Tom would do,” we say to each other. The writing not only gets done but also has a chance to retain the intensity and urgency that makes any writing memorable.
In 1989, when I was managing editor at New Letters and well before my nearly two decades as editor-in-chief, Tom Kennedy began to send us short fiction, which we published at least once a year, beginning with “What Does God Care About Your Dignity, Victor Travesti?” Then, in 1994, the editor of New Letters magazine at the time, James McKinley, handed me a story by Tom called “Landing Zone X-Ray” and asked my opinion. “It’s good,” I said, but haven’t we published a lot of Tom’s stories already? That question I raised, marks a crucial development for me personally and as an editor. Tom Kennedy then, as for virtually all of his adult life, wrote with clear urgency to tell his stories of war, in this case Vietnam, including the effects of torture, and also of love, memory, and celebration, fiction and fact based, and, yes, sometimes in verse. He didn’t stop. He lived the immersed life of a writer. Jim McKinley knew this. Tom, Jim, and art itself, were asking me to catch up. Of course, Jim published the story, despite my inconstancy, and the story was selected for the O. Henry Prize Stories.
After I became editor of New Letters in 2002, Tom began to send me essays and memoirs, most of which I eagerly published. But when he sent me an essay called “I Am Joe’s Prostate” in 2007, I hesitated. It contained graphic and personal medical details that shook my sense of what a literary work should be. I read the essay over and over, marveling at its power. “What’s going on with that essay?” Tom confronted me at a conference after some time. “I need to know.” I had begun to describe the essay to myself and to others as hilarious and terrifying at the same time, which helped me realize, before too late, that I had stumbled onto the definition of brilliance.
When the essay came out soon after—in New Letters—many people told me they refused to read it, put off by its topic of prostate cancer, albeit a misdiagnosis. After the essay won a National Magazine Award, giving New Letters a victory over other finalists such as The New Yorker and Harper’s, everyone, it seemed, began to read the essay. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, put his hand on Tom’s shoulder to say, yes, he would read it; and the literary agent Nat Sobel secured for Tom a multibook deal with Bloomsbury USA.
That attention to writerly technique and discipline, as driving forces for his work, supported Tom’s other roles—as a member of MFA faculties in creative writing for Vermont College’s low-residency program (1985–88) and New Jersey’s Fairleigh Dickinson University, starting there in 2004, and as copublisher and editor, with Walter Cummins, of Serving House Books, the press they founded in 2009.
Tom Kennedy… wrote with clear urgency to tell his stories of war, in this case Vietnam, including the effects of torture, and also of love, memory, and celebration, fiction and fact based, and, yes, sometimes in verse. He didn’t stop. He lived the immersed life of a writer.
Tom’s many awards include two Pushcart Prizes and an Eric Hoffer Award in 2007 for the novel Greene’s Summer—based on his work as translator for the Danish Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims, now called the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims. The book was rereleased in 2010 as In the Company of Angels. Perhaps the award that made him happiest was the 2016 Dan Turèll Prize by the Turèll Society in Denmark, named for the late and beloved Danish poet, and presented to Tom by Turèll’s widow, Chili. Tom’s translations of Turèll’s poems were the first to appear in English, in New Letters 2009, under the heading “Uncle Danny Comes to America.”
During Tom’s final year, he suffered from burns to his hands from a fire, and from a benign but ever-growing brain tumor that inhibited his speech and dexterity. He nevertheless pushed ahead—writing slowly, hiring an assistant—producing short stories and memoirs, and, who knows, maybe poems, offering us who knew him a presiding example of perseverance and hope. “He says he is happy,” a mutual friend reported to me during 2020, “though that takes some real inner strength, considering what he is enduring.”
Robert Stewart’s latest book of poems is Working Class (Stephen F. Austin State University) and of essays is The Narrow Gate: Writing, Art & Values (Serving House). Until 2020, he served as editor-in-chief of New Letters magazine.
