After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1970, Kenney won a Reynolds Fellowship and studied Celtic lore in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

He teaches in the English department at the University of Washington and has published in many magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The American Scholar.

•Ezra Pound—Kenney's style mirrors Pound's "rapid-fire imagery" • Greco-Roman mythologies, biblical and historical references, and hypothetical prehistoric landmasses Taken from Holinger's review in The Midwest Quarterly.

Containing three sections of poetry ('The Hours of the Day,' 'First Poems,' and 'Heroes'), the book is made up of "not well-wrought urns so much as complex molecules programmed to coalesce into larger structures" (Merrill, foreword).

But what makes this book stand out is not that it consists of multiple sonnets, but that the delivery is so original and so far-fetched that its publication sparked much discussion about Kenney's style.

A book with images varying from sea to battle scenes, The Evolution of the Flightless Bird marks the beginning of Kenney's career as a poet.

Metaphorically centered around the title1, Orrery is a single story told from the inclusion of well over 70 poems written in different styles and divided into three main sections: 'Hours' (time), 'Apples' (memory), and 'Physics.'

A prelude of sorts to The Invention of the Zero, Orrery poses the belief that the world is now being mechanically driven, but it presents the view in a different fashion.

To Kenney, the cider mill represents "a relic of that pre-electrical world ... A comprehensible world, in many ways ... None of it seems to have left this farm, at any rate-- ... crippled dance steps, disassembled stories, half-hummed tunes, all common property--disintegration projects ... with the confusion of common sense, as it sometimes seems, from the decay of the clockwork universe" (Orrery ix, Kenney).

Somewhere along the way, in the midst of a technologically advancing contemporary life, the unification of nature and time disintegrated to bits and pieces, remnants of a former mosaic, of a former sensibility.

Written from a personal perspective of life on a farm, this in itself completely differentiates the varying approaches used in The Invention of The Zero and Orrery in tackling the subject of technological advance.

Though four are set in World War II, all examine the history of the universe and its evolution from the Big Bang to the invention of computers to the development of the atomic bomb.

An influential poet and person in Kenney's life, Merrill reviews and gets the audience ready for The Evolution of the Flightless Bird.

"With its agreeable eddies of temperament, reflections that braid and shatter only to recompose downstream, this book moves like a river in a country of ponds."

Then Merrill continues to illustrate Kenney's stylistic approach by praisefully describing the beautiful imagery that he creates by combining, or "doubling," select words.

He goes further as to describe Kenney's stylistic approach as "rendering a given scene in sound so artful and imagery so burnished by myth that words appear to have found their poet."

Parnini also takes the same defensive approach as Merrill, admitting the obscurity obtained at times due to the "complicated thought" and "intricate patterns in [Kenney's] language," but undermining it with the higher goal—achievement of originality.

Polar opposite to Muratori's criticism, "Star Turns" praises and constantly defends Kenney's book, calling it "a dazzling, book-length 'poem of the mind.'"

Parnini claims that the central goal of Orrery is to rediscover "the sensible order of nature" that Kenney was able to find and experience during his time on the farm.

Kenney, he argues, is looking for "the unified physical and moral world seemingly 'blown to [pieces]' by the sense of relativity that governs contemporary life."

Granting Kenney stylistic ability, he takes it to a level of sarcasm by comparing Orrery to a display of fireworks.

She says that it is simply a "hodgepodge of language" trying to cram too many concepts together with the only intention of impressing his audience with the extravagance of his diction and style.

Though admitting that "Kenney's linguistic acrobatics can be dazzling," Lasher concludes to say that his overly self-consciousness causes his "artificial style" to be too distracting.

However, she argues that this is done poorly because the book is too materialistic and historical in its subject matter, leaving no room for the imagination or for the involvement of the human experience.

Kenney, Pettingell says, "strives for a wholeness of understanding"—a middle ground--"that might restore meaning and hope to our earthly endeavors."

The Midwest Quarterly Summer 1996 Basically unbiased, Hollinger's review lists many of Kenney's influences, citing textual references throughout the book.

While he does say that "the poem's rapid-fire imagery" leaves "the reader left to connect disparate metaphors and references," Hollinger does not go into further detail or analysis on the subject.

He does, however, praise Kenney's "adroit use of alliteration, consonance, and assonance," going further to call The Invention of the Zero an "epic rendition of creation"—but not in the religious sense.

Publishers Weekly July 19, 1993 Though very short, this article combines summary with a twist of review, leaning a bit in the same direction as Lasher's.