The legacy of South Bay poet and bookseller JB Kennedy
JB Kennedy. PhotoTo Poet JB Kennedy, a Homage (James Bullard Kennedy passed away on July 13, 2020) by Bill Yankes When the call comes in the dead of night, the doctor leaps to his feet to rush to attend a person in crisis; so does the fireman, and the war correspondent… the warrior poet cannot bear the ringing call of maladies in the ether and not rush to his typewriter. JB Kennedy. Photo by Gloria PlascenciaA warrior poet, drawn to sounds, voices—to the melding of nature, the urban din, and the human yearning voice; drawn even to the unbearable tonalities of inner silence in its cadences and luminosities, cannot stand still stirred by inner galaxies of whispered encryptions. That is how I now remember JB Kennedy, my mentor, my friend. I would make sure I’d stop at his overstocked second-hand bookstore in Redondo Beach in the early 1990s—straight from my work in halls of crime and punishment in downtown Los Angeles on my way to my puny sailboat cabin at the King Harbor Marina. He’d hand me books to read when I was pursuing my master’s in creative writing. Beethoven and Mozart and Liszt would be filling the small store’s atmosphere with beckoning arpeggios that would flood the…
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