Love Poems for Cannibals

As the reader moves through my volume of poetry, Love Poems for Cannibals, he/she will find poems of war (in this case Vietnam), poems dealing with current spiritual issues (Christianity, Buddhism, spiritual doubt and the soaring-singing human spirit), dysfunctional family relationships and feelings, portraits of great figures in contemporary human history presented with candor and wit, poems that rage against the omnipresence of human hypocrisy and poems that present American/Western civilization under the glaring light of truth – with the single redemptive quality that this truth sings in these poems.A volume of contemporary poetry, Love Poems for Cannibals expresses the thoughts, feelings, quandaries and wonder of an American poet very much alive to the darkness and light of the 21st century.Poet Raymond Keen writes, “I was born and raised in Pueblo, Colorado. Back in my childhood of the 40’s and my adolescence during the 50’s, I believed in human greatness and human virtue. I had respect for authority, and believed that life was fundamentally fair and could be understood as a rational narrative. I believed that a human being could, through words, come close to expressing the truth, even if only a momentary fragment of this truth. I now realize that I may have been overly optimistic. Human verbal communication characteristically obscures the truth, as it covers the truth with the repetitive cliche. My poetry attempts to make that insight present, palpable, and undeniable. Although I sometimes may succeed in getting through or beyond the cliche, I make no claims on truth.”In Love Poems for Cannibals, truth and beauty, body and spirit, mind and matter, pain and pleasure admix in the following eight sections:‧ The Vietnam War is not dinky dau. (1967-1968)‧ Est Deus in Nobis. (1969-2012)‧ Mother Is On Vacation. (1974-2004)‧ mouth-honour (1973-2003)‧ Is There Mucus in Paradise? (1973-2010)‧ Homo Homini Lupus Est. (1976-2009)‧ Final Entropy (1974-2012)‧ Prose Coda (2001-2012)Making reference to current cultural, political and social events, Raymond Keen’s poems can be darkly provocative, bitingly witty and serenely contemplative. Raymond writes, “I want readers to be stirred with questions about what it means to be a human being. I don’t provide answers, but I try to make clear what the stakes are. The stakes for human beings in the 21st century are very high.”Powerful, memorable, wise, and at times infuriating, his collection of poetry is the result of an accumulation of language gems and cultural/literary insights acquired over many years, which shed light on the time in which we are now living.