Review: Victoria Kenanda

When I choose a “blog of the week,” it’s rarely about a single post. It’s about consistency—work that shows up week after week with care, thought, and voice. Victoria Kenanda’s writing fits that standard, and these two recent pieces are a good window into why.

At first glance, her work can appear deceptively simple. Lists. Familiar phrases. Everyday language. But if you slow down, you begin to see what’s really happening: this is the thinking behind the writing. These posts feel like a peek inside her creative process—the raw material she shapes into something precise, musical, and intentional.

Synonyms of a Poet reads like a quiet inventory of language, but it also reveals how closely she listens to words and how deliberately she chooses them. In English We Say takes familiar expressions and gently turns them, reminding the reader how strange, funny, and revealing everyday language can be when you actually look at it.

I once commented on her work that she is a finish carpenter, while I’m more like a house framer. I can put up the structure, but she’s the one sanding the edges, aligning the joints, and making sure everything fits just right. I can’t do what she does.

The best I can manage is:

See the cat

The cat is on the mat

scat cat

back to the mat

Her work reminds me that refinement matters—that the quiet attention to detail is often where the real craft lives. Taken together, these pieces don’t just stand on their own; they reflect a writer who understands her tools and trusts restraint. That’s what makes her work so consistently good.

If you want to understand why her writing works, these two posts are a good place to start.

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