The Porcupine's Kisses (Poets, Penguin) [Mass Market Paperback]

Stephen Dobyns (Author), Howie Michels (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002 | Series: Poets, Penguin

Stephen Dobyns is one of America's most respected poets; his manner is tart and often sardonic, his language tough, funny, yet at heart profoundly humane. In his eleventh book of poetry he pushes the boundaries of conventional collections, presenting an intriguing two-part volume. The first section contains ruminative prose poems, dealing with a man who is looking back over the successes and failures of his life, that are intercut with short "considerations" in the manner of the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The second section presents an alphabetical selection of words defined by Dobyns in evocative one-line phrases. Punctuating the text throughout are woodcuts and line drawings by the artist Howie Michels. A compelling exploration of attitudes, words, and concepts, this is an important addition to Doybns's body of work.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"This one has sex to prove the world exists, that one gets bitten by the dog." Such disarming aphorisms, along with paragraph-long meditations on death, sex, fame, and memory, make up the first and by far the better half of The Porcupine's Kisses, a well-constructed if somewhat repetitive volume of poetic prose from Stephen Dobyns, the prolific and accessible poet (Cemetery Nights; Velocities) and novelist (The Church of Dead Girls, etc.). That first half is all poetic, generalized sentences and paragraphs, linked by the speaker's sensibility. The second half, "Definitions," comprises hundreds of wisecracking or deflating definitions (loosely modeled on Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary), each one phrase long, in alphabetical order: "Erudition: necktie on a soapbox. Esthetic: the rhetoric of bad taste." With illustrations by Howie Michels.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Stephen Dobyns, author of ten previous volumes of poetry and nineteen novels, teaches in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, three fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, and numerous other awards.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); First Edition edition (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142002445
• ISBN-13: 978-0142002445
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,011,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry Plus, October 26, 2002

By 

m (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Porcupine's Kisses (Poets, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

THE PORCUPINE'S KISSES is not just a book of poetry, but a work of textual art. The pages are busy. Part One-- "Prose Poems and Considerations" is divided into right page, left page sections; Part Two-- "Definitions" is alphabetical. Throughout the text are illustrations, line drawings and wood cuts by Howie Michels. It is unorthodox-- a well thought out, creative collaboration by two men.

In fact, that is its most obvious feature: its masculinity. Dobyns' humor is dark, indelible. His point of view is sharp and detached. There is something clearly MAN about this book-- not at all to disparage the value of the work. It is compassionate, shy, sometimes grotesque. It can be out-loud laughably funny, and it comes from a completely isolated place, a thoughtful autumn of a man's life.

The nature of its layout can force readers to move through this book in an unconventional way. The two sections, the illustrations, and then alphabetical listings suggest alternative ways to read and look.

It is possible to maneuver through considerations: "Pimple boasts of being a boil." "That he was weak became his strongest defense." Or look up odd Definitions as if in a dictionary. "Impotent: nubbins redux." "Uglier: the children of your friends."

It is also possible to travel through the book, motivated by the illustrations-- keen renderings of Dobyns's writing and his quirky personality.

The playful intellect at the center of his prose poems is most attractive. Dobyns' poems are somber but humorous, have a sense of exile, a wistful for once was that is deeply moving and beautifully human.

4.0 out of 5 stars One Liners, November 6, 2006

By 

Michael P. Maslanka (dallas, texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Porcupine's Kisses (Poets, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

Comedy had henny Youngman flipping out one liners, poetry has Stephen Dobyns. The one liners are pithy to the extreme but make you think---"Humane:Thinks Twice" or "He loved in order to be increased, not in order to love." They are perhaps bits and pieces of ideas he had for longer poems. But whatever they are, or from whatever source they sprung, thet are welcome from one of our great(but too often overlooked) artists.

1.0 out of 5 stars Sweepings from the fortune-cookie factory floor., March 4, 2003

By 

Daryl Anderson (Trumansburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Porcupine's Kisses (Poets, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

Dobyns is one of my favorite poets but this "collection" is a big disappointment. Read his "Velocities" instead.

"Porcupine Kisses" is composed of three forms of writing plus the illustrations by Michels. None of these four elements is either entertaining enough or meaningful enough to justify buying or reading the book.

Dobyns' extensive poetic work to date suggests a skeptical view of the world and its mores - but having bought this book I feel like I'm the one he's snickering at. It is a physically unsatisfying volume as much as it is an overpriced one. I'm not sure what's up with his publisher situation, but Dobyns' recent (poetic) works have all been slender paperback-only editions printed on a sort of cheesy-cheap newsprint and priced like parchment. In this book the woodcut-style illustrations seem to have been added either to create the illusion of "high art" (ahh... the slender chapbook on linen paper, hand-colored by the artist) or in an attempt to pull together the three disparate textual elements (umm... adding enough stuff to this pot will allow us to call it bouillabaisse). From a poet whom I have always counted on to cork the phony burble of sentimentality, either rationale for the illustrations is cloyingly discordant.

The first half of the book alternates brief, half-page prose pieces with half-page clumps of aphorisms. The prose is interesting enough, I suppose, but it really is just prose. It contrasts sharply with the wide range of poetic forms Dobyns has employed over the years. Many of these have veered close to the prose-poem form, but never have they lost the element of finely-chiseled facet that form imposes on mere prose. The aphorisms, to put it bluntly, hardly rise above the level of fortune cookie pithiness.

The last half of the book is comprised of what another reviewer has generously termed "daffynitions" - odd little definitions of words that are supposed, I guess, to cast a refracted light on their meanings. I found few of them either humorous or meaningful and certainly wasn't willing to plough through pages and pages of an alphabetized listing to uncover the odd gem. I wonder if Dobyns fancies himself the John Ciardi of the new millennium.

In my opinion, Dobyns is a master of language and modern poetic form who has always mixed a wry but clear-eyed incisiveness with somewhat more languorous poetic story-telling. (He must be a good, native story-teller if one can judge from his immense body of fictional work.) But his poetry has also always carried a certain worldly-weariness that seems to have settled too heavily on the shoulders of the writer of this book, and squeezed out these two parts in these equally unsatisfying ways: the one meanderingly prosaic and the other evaporated to dry dust.

The essence of my favorite poem by Dobyns, "Querencia" (collected in his "Velocities" from an earlier book), might well be distilled down to one or two lines when I try to describe it to friends; but in doing so, I know I will fail before I start. In this book Dobyns seems to have exhaustedly decided that all the in-betweens can be skipped and merely the fragmented end result delivered. I can't say I agree. In "Querencia" the bull inevitably, exhaustedly drags itself back to its seemingly arbitrary safe spot - perhaps blankly aware that the safety is only illusory. I sure hope Mr. Dobyns will find a way to drag himself back to poetry.