Raymond Keen, Poet, Arizona

Bio of Raymond Keen, Poet, Arizona

Raymond Keen was educated at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Oklahoma.  He spent three years as a Navy clinical psychologist with a year in Vietnam (July 1967 – July 1968).  Since that time he has worked as a school psychologist and licensed mental health counselor in the USA and overseas, until his retirement in 2006.  He is a credentialed school psychologist in the states of California and Washington, and a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Washington. 

Raymond’s first volume of poetry, Love Poems for Cannibals, was published by CreateSpace in February 2013.  He is also the author of a drama, The Private and Public Life of King Able, which will be published in 2014.  Raymond’s poetry has been published in 24 literary journals.


When  did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

Being a poet is actually a kind of second career.  I was a psychology and English major as an undergraduate at Case Western Reserve University (Adelbert College – 1963).  My graduate degree is in clinical psychology (University of Oklahoma), and since 1966 I have always worked as a clinical psychologist, school psychologist or licensed mental health counselor.  I have been keeping poetic fragments of my writing in notebooks since 1967, beginning with a diary I kept while in Vietnam.  As years went by, I called this writing “SENTENCES and Particles:  A Developmental Obituary.”  Although I had written a few complete poems as early as 1963, I began transforming my notebooks of “poetry fragments” into poetry in 2001-2002.  In all honesty, I am not sure why I began that transformation at that particular time --- maybe it was a dawning sense of my mortality, and the desire to leave something beautiful and worthwhile behind. 
 

In July 2005, I had five poems published in The American Poetry Review.  Since 2005, I continued to develop my poetry into a book that I thought might be worthy of publication.  It was only after our retirement in June 2010, when my wife Kemme and I returned from careers overseas (Europe, Japan, Panama, Okinawa and Turkey) with the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DoDDS), that I began to submit my poetry to online literary journals on a regular basis.  After meeting with success and encouragement in obtaining publication for some of my poems, I decided to publish Love Poems for Cannibals through CreateSpace.  My book was published in February 2013.


Who are notable authors who have influenced your writing?

The two writers that have influenced me the most are Samuel Beckett and Shakespeare.  I was introduced to Shakespeare’s Hamlet in high school, and very intrigued.  So I took two semesters of Shakespeare at CWRU (1960-1961).  The following year I was introduced to Samuel Beckett in comparative literature at CWRU.  Although I consider Shakespeare and Beckett supremely gifted poets, they are generally considered first as dramatists.  Their greatness as playwrights had a major impact in developing my interest in theater.  In terms of my writing, the long-term result has been my writing the play, The Private and Public Life of King Able, which will be published by CreateSpace in 2014.

For me, both William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett embody depth of thought, economy of expression, and an often brilliant but bitter wit.  Other fine writers I have admired have opened my mind to the mystery of the human self, and the fundamental mystery and beauty of what it means to be a human being.  These psychological/philosophical thinkers include Carl Gustav Jung, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.


What stimulates or motivates you to write:  nature, human events, a little wine or vodka, or did I miss something? - this is a being honest with yourself question.  Where/how do you find the most inspiration?

I have been fascinated and appalled by human nature for as long as I can remember --- the good and the evil that reside in human beings (in us).  That is why I became a psychologist.  So my poems are filled with references and images of our “nature.”  The other thing that my poetry attempts to do is to take the reader by surprise, to say something that has never been said before, to say something totally unexpected.  I may even interrupt the flow of a poem in an attempt to accomplish just that.

My desire to surprise and even shock the reader comes from my acute awareness of the cliché.  We are surrounded and inundated by clichés in the media, and in our everyday speech.  It is almost like we are on automatic, as we imitate what other people say.  It is rare in oral or written speech to hear or read something truly original.  I want to upset and disrupt the automatic thinking of my audience, to awaken them from their assumed interpretations of the world.

Do you have any parting words for our readers; any words of wisdom to share?

My parting advice for the readers who are or aspire to be writers is breathtakingly simple:  Write with uncensored passion.  Editing and revision come later

Where can we find your works?  Feel free to show links or websites.

Here is the link to my website:  http://raymondkeen.com

Here is the link to Love Poems for Cannibals on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Poems-Cannibals-Raymond-Keen/dp/1470182688/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398551020&sr=1-1&keywords=love+poems+for+cannibals 

Here is the link to my Facebook Timeline:

https://www.facebook.com/raymond.keen.3

Here is the link to my Facebook Book Page:

https://www.facebook.com/LovePoemsForCannibals

Here is the link to my LinkedIn profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=24538860&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile

Poems by Raymond Keen:

Charles Manson Said

Charles Manson said,

“Dead birds don’t fly.

It’s just between me and God,

But there is no God.

Nixon said I was guilty

In the middle of my trial.

He said I killed 8 people.

How the fuck does that felon know?

Maybe he thinks he’s God.

 

Mr. and Mrs. America,

I see your life leaking out,

Like blood from a hole

In a bucket.

That’s you, guys and dolls!

Humping your money together,

Together in your shopping malls.

Black and white races mixed together,

Together in your bathroom stalls.

 

I am not you,

But you are me.

Look, look,

Very carefully.

You are me.

Look, look,

For your children.

They are with me.

They are with me.”

 

Hitler’s Boyhood

 

The boy Adolf begins school

And sings in the choir.

Other heartless children

Mimic his shrill voice

With its peculiar intensity.

Later Adolf is swelling

In anger and fear.

“Herr Lehrer!  Kommen Sie schnell her!

There is blood on my books!” he shrieks.

 

Poem of Christ

 

                  Oh Christ

You are so far away from now.

I have such sadness

To see you hung on cross for nothing,

To see you vomit out our culture

As they nail hand to tree.

I would bring you down to earth.

I would save you from your dream.

Oh Christ

You were my everything.

But you never knew your limits.

I realize that your teachers turned against you

When you broke their rules.  They were afraid.

You blew it all out of proportion,

Believing that your sacrifice was for all of us.

Didn’t your earthly father let you know

Where you stood with all your strength?

                  Oh Christ

Even as I flee,

I see you everywhere,

Begging,

Sleeping

In the streets.

In prisons

You are the man inside the cage

Bleeding on the floor

Or bleeding on the table

As medical students examine from above,

Francis Bacon’s throne of blood.

Through the one-way mirror

I see you standing

In the isolation chamber.

They say, “Christ, come out of your office!”

But the fallen Christ in rubber suit

Has much work to do in the laboratory.

 

Oh Christ

I have such sadness

Because I cannot remember

Your need for sacrifice.

Or is it that I simply cannot forget?

You were my everything.

I am from top to bottom I don’t know what.

Drunk in the back seat,

I forget the good.

But you are lost in all the traffic.

You are lost in the great big modern fog.

                  Oh Christ

You are so far away from now.

You were my everything.

I have such sadness

To see you hung on cross for nothing.

 

A Tyrant’s Dream

 

You leave home.

You hate them

For not understanding.

You return, but find

You are locked

Out of the house.

Now you remember

Your mother is on vacation.

 

You notice

This other woman

Has more hair

On her arms than you,

But you “let that dog lie.”

Then you notice

These other women

Don’t shave their legs.

But they are weak!

You are strong!

So you climb up the tree

In their back yard.

You peer through the window.

 

Suddenly your path

Seems more certain.

Because you realize

That you are also weak:

All that ability,

But no authority.

Once you were

“The Favorite,”

Simply by playing

A parasitic endgame

With your chameleon host.

Now in this hell

We call heaven,

She can’t even remember your name.

 

You were Ahab

Trapped in the birth canal,

First-rate spirit

Waiting to be born second,

Swallowing your twin’s shit

As he was born,

Waiting, deciding.

Now you are the Robber.

Now you are the Thief.

Now you have

Blue eyes and blond hair.

Now you are utterly fearless.

Now you are Ahab

Astride the White Whale.

Now you play God with Mother.

Now you shit Truth.