In memory of X.J. Kennedy (1929-2026) and Edmund Conti (1929-2025)
An X Is Still a Kiss
by Leslie Monsour
Joseph Charlie Kennedy
Found a happy remedy
To stand apart from all the other Joes.
He put an X before his name,
But that’s not how he rose to fame,
He had the goods already, heaven knows.
Outstanding X.J. Kennedy,
Chock-full of wit and comedy,
Stole hearts while he was stealing every show.
From his breathtaking, rakish romp
With avant garde Marcel Duchamp,
To the voyeur in the cabin of Ms. Stowe,
Joe proved he never lost That Swing,
Which, as we know, means everything;
As for the X, it’s one last kiss from Joe.
Hummingbird
by Ed Shacklee
i.m. Edmund Conti
His lines could punch: he was the sort
whose mastery was always short.
I howled at every joke, in fact,
except this disappearing act.
Flickering, darting with each word,
his wit could shame a hummingbird,
and even a poetic novice
could tell he was a rara avis.
A bitter end? No. Hale or sickly,
Ed made a century go quickly,
and then, much quicker than I’d want, he
left us without Edmund Conti.
Raising the Bar
by Steven Kent
In a prominent bar in Secaucus one day
Sat a formalist poet we know as “X.J.”
He recorded the tale of a down-at-heels lush
Who had been, she insisted, once every man’s crush.
Was she lying quite baldly or telling the truth
In her warning to women that fleeting is youth?
He refused to pass judgement or label a fraud
This bombastically boozy and bawdy old broad.
As a champion of verse marked by meter and rhyme
Mr. Kennedy wasn’t a man of his time,
Yet the standard he set still remains within sight
Of each poet determined to walk in the Light.
Let us raise, then, our glasses and offer a cheer
To a giant regrettably no longer here.
May his memory inspire us: the prayer we now pray
In this prominent bar in Secaucus, N.J.
In Memoriam: X.J. Kennedy
by Bruce Bennett
I read once in your honor. You were there,
Embarrassed to be the subject of a fuss.
We wanted to express how much we care;
To show how very much you mean to us.
Friend after friend extolled you, heaped on praise.
Told of some kindness others couldn’t have known.
Told of your help, advice, those countless ways
You served all those who knew you. There, alone,
You managed to get through that trial with grace
While we were glad to finally say aloud
In perfect concord in a public place
How much we loved you. Yes, loved! We were proud
Of you, and for you. Wanted tribute paid,
And to record the difference you made.
In Brief
by Bob McKenty
Edmund Conti,
What does he want? He
Wants his verse
terse.
For King Joe
by Cody Walker
(written for X.J. Kennedy’s 90th birthday)
Jiggery-pokery
Joseph C. Kennedy
Found his name common, so
Added an X.
Nonagenarian
Wise man and wisecracker.
One in a zillion! Our
Zenith, our Rex.
Pseudonymous
by R.S. Gwynn
A poet once thought of “Xavier”
As a pen-name and queried his savior:
“Will using a saint
Entail sinful taint?”
Said God, “Given your past behavior . . .”
The Levity of Brevity
by Stephen Gold
“Brevity’s the soul of wit.”—Polonius.
In dear Ed’s verses, witty and harmonious,
It’s plain to see Polonius
Was not erroneous.
Tribute to X.J. Kennedy
by Richard Wakefield
“I who once dealt in words and set great store
On words have, in a word or two, no more.”
—“Writer,” from “City Churchyard,” by X.J. Kennedy
The words you dealt, your generosity,
to blurb my first collection were to me
a benison that I devotedly
have striven to deserve. The fates decree
you’ll deal no more. It’s no hyperbole:
you shone a light that leavened poetry.
With heavy heart I pen this elegy,
a threnody
to X.J. Kennedy.
The Dancing Master
by Jan Schreiber
(written for X.J. Kennedy’s 65th birthday)
Let us not speak of numbers, we who lisped
in numbers and took pride in measured steps
toward finality. We think we’ve grasped
the gaunter form under the jaunty wraps.
X the unknown still dominates the game,
still calls the reel we rustic fellows try.
We all attempt to jig it in good time
and in the jogging seek new words to say.
Vary the measure, tempo, and the tune!
Assail the banal while you hold the beat
that keeps us writhing just this side of mad!
But in this decorous orgy you alone
can hear the elemental castanet
driving the dancers deeper into shade.
Steadfastly Ghastly
by Marshall Begel
(after the Ghastly Brats of Peeping Tom’s Cabin)
We celebrate the poet, Joe,
with words obscene, yet apropos.
He reached his personal nirvana
without a school of starved piranha
or vengeance of the children who do
bench-side sports-related voodoo.
He leaves us with his witty verse
unscathed by any witch’s curse
(though nobody would know but he
which graveyard neighbor got his wee.)
To Be Conti-nued
by Viv Priestley
Edmund Conti
was never one to troll or taunt—he
preferred to make us chortle
with lines so witty they just might become immortal.
Ode to X.J. Kennedy
by Christopher Scribner
I ain’t gonna babble platitudes, ‘cuz eloquence I lack,
But if I was playin’ Scrabble®, dude, I’d want you in my rack.
A Clerihew for Joe
by Charles Ghigna
X.J. Kennedy
Had no enemy.
Even boredom
Ignored him.
For Edmund Conti in Heaven
by Gail White
“When I was one and twenty
A wise man said to me
If you want to be a poet
Make sure your verse is free…
And now with no poems weighty
And most of them in Light
I’ve reached the age of eighty,
And oh, he’s right, he’s right.”
—Edmund Conti
For you and me,
A poem should be
A thing of grace and rhyme.
The world of Modern Poetry
Rebuffed us every time.
But now you’ve found,
On higher ground,
A more enduring fame.
The poets for their rhymes renowned
Were waiting when you came.
Clerihew on the Obvious Rhyme for Kennedy
by Anna M. Evans
Joseph “X. J.” Kennedy
Always appreciated a good threnody.
Alas, but this is not one.
All it says is: we won’t let him be forgotten.
For Further Reading
by Dan Campion
I once heard X. J. Kennedy,
But Edmund Conti, not;
The world spins much too fast for me.
I’m grateful that I’ve got
My back issues of Light, and free
Access to Light online,
De facto, an anthology
Of Joe’s and Ed’s, to mine
For inspiration and for glee:
These masters will, still, share
Their wit and humor generously,
Each read, aloud, with care.