“Lurking below the pure alchemy in Kearney’s Buck Studies is a language that constantly flirts with collapse. The combination of an out-of-joint lyric with a mille-feuille of text reveals the transformative subject of the black body quelled, contained, caricatured, and dismembered. Absurdity marries intellect here while a frenetic melancholy embraces the ceaseless nature of historical despair. And yet, we still encounter humor, perverse and sprung from chaos. Buck Studies is a peek behind the curtain of a brilliant mind resigned to the fact that “the torments must go on mustn’t they for the tremble tremble tremble…” if nothing else.”

— Ruth Ellen Kocher

"Kearney's collection of opera libretti explodes with verbal inge-nuity, graphically lunging out at us like Marvel Comics sound effects meets Italo-Futurist cut-up. Stuck in a domestic cell or a tenement, his characters bust out in song that riddles and rages and confounds. Kearney is our generation's lyric and sonic pugilist."

— Cathy Park Hong