Nobody's Hell [Paperback]

Douglas Goetsch (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1882413601 | ISBN-13: 978-1882413607 | Publication Date: May 1, 1999

"What draws me to Dough Goetsch's poems is his fine eye for detail, but what keeps me in his ear and voice; tender yet aware, ironic, but open. No one, poet included, is left off the hook, sitll nothing human is turned away." - Cornelius Eady "[his] first full-length collection introduced to a wider readership a poet of subtle technical skill and wicked good humor...These poems will "stay up in the head" of any reader who cares about poetry, and what we do here, in our time."-Robert McDowell "These poems have their definite rhythms and subtle music rigning as they present seemingly ordinary experiences in an extraordinary wry and darkly humorus way. One of the poems is dedicated to Stephen Dobyns, and you can see his fearlessness in these poems as well as his compulive, brooding humanity. He has a large heart and he's found a richly modulated narrative voice to express it. " - Len Roberts.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Nobody's Hell is my first full-length collection, but it includes 18 poems previously published in Wherever You Want, a chapbook put out two years ago by Dave Baradier at Pavement Saw Press. Poems from Nobody's Hell have also appeared in The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, Hanging Loose, Marlboro Review, Rain City Review, Mudfish, Nimrod, and other places. Three of the poems have appeared on the PoetryDaily website (poems.com), and can be found in the archives there. More work online can be found at the Academy of American Poets website (poets.org)

About the Author

Douglas Goetsch was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Northport, Long Island. he has a BA in Religion for Wesleyan University, and MA in American Civiliazation from New York University, and has taught writing and English at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan since 1987. He has also worked as a restaurant cook, a Park Avenue doorman, and a concert jazz dancer. He lives in Greenwich village, NYC. His poetry has been published in "Atlanta Review," "HangingLoose," " The Iowa Review,""Marlboro Review," "New York Quarterly," "Nimrod," "Prairie Schooner," and numerous other journals. he was a 1997 recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, and his chapbook "Wherever You Want, " won the 1997 Pavement SawPress Chapbook Award. "Nobodys Hell" is his first full-length collection.

Product Details

• Paperback: 74 pages
• Publisher: Hanging Loose Press (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882413601
• ISBN-13: 978-1882413607
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,314,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Kirkus Review criticism offensive and inappropriate, January 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Nobody's Hell (Hardcover)

I find the publication of the negative feedback blurb by Kirkus Reviews on the front of this page offensive, tactless, and inappropriate. Although criticism is relevant, it can be shaped in many other, more appropriate, ways - constructively, maturely - than it had appeared in the review, without detracting from the critic's originally intended message. Ironically, the critic who assails the author, whom he arrogantly refers to as "Easy", and as someone who failed to "grow up" with his poems, appears to suffer from this same apparent lack of maturity. The publication of such a biased review highly charged with tactlessness is unfair for the author and for potential readers; it's unfair because it has the effect of innappropriately relating the imprudent rants of one critic over assumed personality traits of the author, to the actual quality of the book. Whether the Kirkus criticism accurately portrays the quality of the reading or not becomes questionable because of the lack of an expected degree of objectivity, and the excessively "annoying voice" that the critic uses him or herself.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strong, Remarkable Poems I Read Over and Over, September 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nobody's Hell (Paperback)

NOBODY'S HELL by Douglas Goetsch is filled with the kind ofpoetry I feel comfortable recommending to anyone. High school kids whowould never consider reading a poem are invited in by the every day language, the sense of humor and the way Goetsch accurately portrays the childhood of a brainy, never too cool kid living through his family's disintegration. Fellow poets will be drawn in by the subtle rhythms, the strong, logical narratives that move the reader through each poem naturally, without wasted motion or words, and Goetsch's uncanny eye that always seems to pick precise, perfect details that get to the heart of matters we all recognize but rarely take the time to examine.

I go for the poems that are much more than a poet who likes to hear the sound of his own voice. In the opening piece, "Counting," a boy is walking along side a building, running his finger "in the grout/ till it grew hot and numb" counting bricks, floors, buildings, city blocks. We learn he comes from a family of counters: his brother counts cavities, his grandfather compounds daily interest and his father uses "numbers to predict/ when men are going to die." The poem gracefully turns at the start of its close with the unexpected yet inevitable line, "That's all any child wants: to count," and you sense that this boy hasn't felt like he's counted too often and you suspect that a number of the poems in this collection will watch this boy learning what counts and how he can matter in the world.

In "Dark Morning" there's a power shortage and the boy's mother hands him a flashlight, tells him to help his father shave. The language is taut and simple like directions that even I can follow. The tension simmers as the boy shines this small spotlight on his father's face and comes to a boil with the penultimate line, "A face I can't ever remember touching." "Walking Wounded" made me remember how much trouble, how laugh out loud funny and how incredibly significant a b**er could be in high school. In the prose poem "Lawyer," despite the divorce lawyer's hesitancy, the narrator's mother brings him into the office and the boy hears things that can only be called cruel. The effect is like a good, clean hit in football that comes out of nowhere and leaves you on the ground stunned. When you go back to read it over again it is still hard to believe that the tiniest of movements, the briefest bits of conversation and a few choice details could add up to so much force.

An adolescent is self immersed and tends to paint the world in broad black and white, instantly shifting, stripes. Goetsch gets the details, the feel of childhood and high school so dead on right that I'm fairly certain that things like balance and overview would spoil it. (And the Kirkus reviewer certainly didn't go to my school. No one bragged about high grades. Ever. Even now, I would rather have been, if not "the girl who f***ed " in "Northport," one of the guys who was lucky enough to hang out with her, or the younger dumber kid who could "kick the s**t" out of the brainy geeky narrator in "Rice." Yeah, even if you promised I would grow up and publish a book filled with so many compelling poems.)

The second section follows the narrator through college, his move to NYC and his struggles with loneliness as he tries to create a place for himself. In "Such A Good Dancer," the poem that digs the deepest and moves me the most, the narrator loses his virginity, "Disgusted with myself-two years/ in college and still a virgin-I would/ stick my d**k in a girl and end that." Randi Muelbach is the girl and there's not a thing about her the narrator likes. He's on a mission and it is enough that she thinks he is a good dancer and would go with him to his room. I know, that doesn't seem too different than what any guy would do; but while the girl is undressing the narrator says, "After tonight I don't want us/ to ever talk again. OK?/ That's what I said. / She looked down at me and said/ Sure, like it was nothing." And I had to read those lines again, right away, to believe them. And sure, that is often the exchange; but this time, the awkward and honest but insensitive narrator puts it out there in plain words and the girl has to acknowledge this statement, voice some kind of response, and the reader has to figure out how he or she feels about the situation, the two people involved as we all:

"hear the whole dorm writhing/ on a Saturday night. Even Kim Putnam/ the born-again who wore only long skirts/ and was losing her hair, was getting banged/ and moaning like a wild woman. Sometimes it sounded like a crowd/ ooh-ing and ahh-ing at a car accident;/ sometimes I heard the night as one f**k/ xeroxed and traveling room to room."

That's what the best of Goetsch's poems do: they take familiar scenes and show them through a fresh lens, they take the reader a little further, force you to stop and think and feel, explore things that would make you uncomfortable, things you ordinarily would happily pass by. And by the time I made my way through NOBODY'S HELL, I had lost count of the number of strong, remarkable poems I would be reading over and over.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is real., August 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nobody's Hell (Paperback)

Douglas Goetsch isn't hiding anything. It all comes out when you enter Nobody's Hell - his mother's moustache, his flailing love life - he doesn't leave anything out. This book offers an extremely intimate look into the life of a wonderfully complicated and frighteningly honest individual.