Beyond the Law: James Mckenna
| Publication year | 2012 |
| Citation | Vol. 27 No. 4 |
Fall 2012 #5. Beyond The Law: James McKenna
VOLUME 27 , NUMBER 4, Fall 2012
by Daniel J. Murphy
Poetry was once described by the poet Novalis as a balm for wounds inflicted by reason. For lawyer and poet James McKenna of Hallowell, the law - a veritable bastion of reason - is an endless fount of inspiration. As an art form, poetry has long held the power to inspire and move others, transforming deeply personal reflections into shared, universal observations. However, behind its power and mystery, the discipline of poetry also involves the daunting task of assembling, rearranging, and then reducing words to their essential essence. McKenna, who has spent more than 33 years serving in the Office of the Maine Attorney General, has embraced this task and has made it an important part of his life. His latest collection of poems, The Common Law, was recently published and is available at www.moonpiepress.com. McKenna sat down with the Maine Bar Journal to discuss his interests.
MBJ: Please tell our readers about your interest in writing poetry.
JM: Like any lawyer, I am very interested in words and what makes them effective. Samuel Coleridge, who died in 1834, would have placed poetry a bit above the prose of an excellent legal brief. In fact Coleridge urged others to follow his own "homely definitions of prose and poetry." He called prose "words in their best order" and poetry "the best words in their best order."
MBJ: Is writing poetry part of your weekly routine?
JM: Actually, it's part of my daily routine. If I'm working on a poem, I'm delighted to get up at five in the morning and sit at my desk, fiddling around with the words, trying to get them to match their sense - usually without much success. Samuel Beckett described the task well: "When the sense is sleep, the words go to sleep____"
MBJ: Where do you get your inspiration for writing poems?
JM: When it comes to poetry, lawyers have two advantages. First, we work every day with people who are struggling with difficult and often very interesting problems. Trying to help these people can sometimes result in an idea for a poem. Of course, a lot of people, not just lawyers, have jobs like that. But lawyers have a second advantage: we always have a pad of paper and we're always taking notes!
MBJ: Do you have any influences for your writing?
JM: I love formal...
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