X.J. Kennedy – String Poet

Hermit’s Morning

To Dorothy, On My Days While You’ve Been in Hospital

High time to rise and brew strong tea
And be the things I ought to be:
Indentured swallower of pills,
Payer of long forgotten bills,
Late filler of the tomcat’s bowl,
Prospector for a fresh mouse hole,
Exchanger on the net of words,
Slave suet-source for ingrate birds,
Dull contemplator, philosophe,
Excessive poundage slougher-off,
In-fetcher of the Sunday Times,
Ignorer of church steeple chimes,
Dishwasher-emptier, recluse,
Slogger through day though what’s the use.

X.J. Kennedy was born in Dover, N. J., on August 21, 1929, shortly before the crash of the stock market. Irked by the hardship of having the name of Joseph Kennedy, he stuck the X on and has been stuck with it ever since.
Kennedy grew up in Dover, went to Seton Hall (B.Sc. ’50) and Columbia (M.A., ’51), then spent four years in the Navy as an enlisted journalist, serving aboard destroyers. He studied at the Sorbonne in 1955-56, then devoted the next six years to failing to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. But he did meet Dorothy there.

He has taught English at Michigan, at the Woman’s College of the U. of North Carolina (now UNC Greensboro), and from 1963 through 1978 at Tufts, with visiting sojourns at Wellesley, U. of California Irvine, and the U. of Leeds. In 1978, he became a free-lance writer.