The first Elmslie I read was Circus Nerves; the first-ever line, “They advanced towards Point A, / their malicious grandfather.” “Ancestor Worship” safaried on from that point, shifting from technical jargon, to cartoonish expression, and more—insert exponent here—ending with the safari-nauts being consumed by giant insects. The poem was funny and absolutely not; was serious but self-mocking. I recognized “Elmslie” when, a few months later, I saw The Orchid Stories. Now, forty-nine years later, “demise-parody penchant” remains a constant in my everyday thought-vocabulary.

Kenward wrote on a Great Stave. The Great Stave (U.K.-speak, in honor of Kenward's heritage) stacks up the bass and treble staves, is a space for jotting down the full range of notes from the lowest rumblings to the highest crystalline harmonics. Anyone, any one of us, can range across a great emotional stave, feel and express the lowest thoughts and emotions, then, moments later, reverse ourselves and rise to the brightest expressions of happiness. Kenward, as lyricist and librettist, frequently and happily yoked himself to composers, and so had constant reminders of the fact (though he certainly already knew) that single notes, sequential melodies, the horizontal movement of events, however musical, cannot capture the full experience of living, its inextricably mixed range of feeling. For that a composer needs notes, but also needs chords, needs to stack up those notes of emotion and event, needs to keep them moving right along, sometimes in harmony, oftentimes clashing, to create an honest and satisfying complexity. As with music, so Kenward's writing.

I was fortunate enough to know, visit, and on occasion publish Kenward. As a toast to a soul in transit I would only observe: As with his writing, so the man.