Playing Poker with Tennessee Wiliams

If you haven’t already, you’ll fall in love with Pilkington’s voice when you read “Pomegranate,” the first poem in this new, crazy-wonderful collection. Vivid detail wound with delicious humor augmented by the elegant, quiet, remarkable imagery of his closure. There’s a comfortable, highly-intelligent oddness on these pages, page after page of consciousness-changing images, and moments of such vulnerability that you’ll forget you’re reading and find you want to reach out and comfort the speaker. I couldn’t put this book down. I went from poem to poem feeling my jaw dropping successively lower as I progressed. Buy this book – it’ll repay you with so many marvelings you’ll go right back to the first page when you finish the last. This is brilliant work.

–Renée Ashley

Kevin Pilkington’s poems are first order charming. Playing Poker With Tennessee Williams is sweet as a Mint Julep and as strong as the best Southern Comfort. Pilkington invokes the Gods and they answer with kindness and hope.

-Michael Dennis

I have been reading Kevin Pilkington’s marvelous poems with delight and admiration for over three decades. Pilkington is one of those poets whose memorable phrasings and turns of thought travel from the streets of New York City to come to lodge in this reader’s brain. He is a keen observer always on the edge of the man-made and natural worlds with his quietly arresting images and imagination: “I wanted the tree to play one/of those old standards by Mercer/or Van Heusen, something soft with/ a melody that sounds like a bandage.” He is also a poet of great heart. And human dignity. Playing Poker With Tennessee Williams is a must-read by a poet at the height of his powers.

-Stuart Dischell

What interests me most about Kevin Pilkington’s work is its range of content and tone. He can be serious and humorous with equal skill, and often in the same poem. His subject matters are human sexuality, human frailty, and post-modern life with all its joys and vicissitudes.

-Okla Elliott