"In Robert Kendall's lovingly alarming poems, the world we try
to rationalize and control insists on not being bent to our purposes. It is what is. To
that central, tautological possibility Kendall's poems are constantly alert, as they
record with equal fidelity the bumbles we lead, instead of lives, when we act out our
longing that the world be not itself but what we want it to be."
--William Matthews
"In Robert Kendall's lovingly alarming poems, the world we try
to rationalize and control insists on not being bent to our purposes. It is what is. To
that central, tautological possibility Kendall's poems are constantly alert, as they
record with equal fidelity the bumbles we lead, instead of lives, when we act out our
longing that the world be not itself but what we want it to be."