The Father of the Predicaments (Wesleyan Poetry Series) [Hardcover]

Heather McHugh (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series | Publication Date: November 29, 2001

Available now in paperback, The Father of the Predicaments is Heather McHugh's first book since Hinge & Sign was selected as a National Book Award finalist and chosen a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and Publishers Weekly. In this witty and deeply felt collection, McHugh takes her cue from Aristotle, who wrote that "the father of the predicaments is being." For McHugh, being is intimately, though perhaps not ultimately, bound to language, and these poems cut to the quick, delivering their revelations with awesome precision

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bright rhythms, pointed rhymes and dazzling surfaces distinguish McHugh's poems, which tease their language to the ends of wit: "I tell you outright,/I'm a neitherer. But what are you? You are a bother." McHugh's sixth collection follows her new and selected Hinge & Sign (a National Book Award finalist), and continues her pithily specific explorations of general human conditions: being, thought, life, death, time. The opening "Not a Prayer" demands of the poet "every surge of language, every scrap and flotsam" she has at her command, as she searches for meaning in the death of a septuagenarian, mother-like figureA"a nomen always aiming/ for amen." In the title poem, the "Father" visits each "Predicament" at night, like a parent checking sleeping children, "train[ing] us in the virtues we most lacked." Her M?bius strip-like sentences double back on seemingly obvious meanings and sound patterns ("To what high end/ the spondee's spasm"), daring us to give up on them. Yet the jokes work to draw us in. She writes of a bather's poitrine: "This was mesmer/ to terrify mortals: and so/ from the calm corroborate tubworlds/ she climbed out, bore her own dead weight again, took on the old/ mundane emergency: the world/ at large, its separations/ hefted." The construction of such poems, and of the opening tour de force, displays McHugh's Dickinsonian, saving restlessness: she can't stop looking for self-undermining meanings within the clearest of statements. McHugh's best poems are both comic and profound: their depth comes from the belly laugh of the Medusa. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

National Book Award finalist McHugh tackles caregiving for a dying relative, the moon, love, the self, sex, and subjects not readily discernible in poems that focus too much on wordplay and too little on emotion. At times her work moves toward parody, as in "Neither Brings Charges": "When someone barks out/ Author! authorAthinking thinking's/ in the wings, however far the furor goes/ no star will come: only a fever." "Not a Prayer," a long poem about a relative's death, has some nice moments: "The dining room's become/ a mill of business, wheel of paperwork and news./ In short, it has become the outside world." Mentioned too in this poem is the title phrase: "The father of the/ predicaments, wrote Aristotle's translator, is being." McHugh is a modernist and an extremely cerebral poet, so these poems will not please everyone, but readers interested in language poetry will find poems of interest here. For academic collections and libraries where McHugh has a following.ADoris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 86 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (November 29, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819563757
• ISBN-13: 978-0819563750
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,724,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful predicaments, June 28, 2000

By 

Alan DeNiro "alan_deniro" (Oakdale, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Father of the Predicaments (Wesleyan Poetry Series) (Hardcover)

Formally innovative and metrically sound without being stuffy, wildly experimental in diction and voice while still being firmly rooted in the vernacular, Heather McHugh's poems are so luminescent they could shine in the dark, and Father of the Predicaments is no exception. An antidote to those who say poetry can't be challenging AND accessible at the same time. I'd also highly recommend picking up Hinge and Sign, her recent New and Selected.