Saints and Strangers (New Poetry Series) [Paperback]

Andrew Hudgins (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hudgins's well-nigh perfect first book considers the plight of a frail humanity in a universe that permits, or at any rate seems to permit, the existence of evil. "Fire and St. Francis," for example, shows the saint attempting to make friends with Brother Fire by suffering it to burn as it will. The poems suggest that if Creation has a purpose, it is a mystery, and that its workings are the stuff of paradox. If that sounds like a complex philosophy, it needs to be said that the poems themselves are as plain, graceful and compulsively readable as they are resonant and profound. Both Hudgins's vision and his mechanics are impeccable. This is immediately and wholly satisfying and yet substantial enough for many readings. November
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Air View Of An Industrial Scene
Amen
At The Piano
Audubon Examines A Bittern
Awaiting Winter Visitors: Jonathan Edwards, 1749
The Bog Of The Fathers
The Choice The Driver Makes
Claims
Consider
The Corn Snake
Eve's Sin
Fire And St. Francis
Glossolalia
Holofernes Reminisces After Three Thousand Years
In The Night Garden
Julia Tutwiler State Prison For Women
A Kiss In Church
Late Spring In The Nuclear Age
Loose Change
Madonna Of The Pomegranate
Magnolias
Mary Magdalene's Left Foot
My Father's House
My Mother's Hands
On Sentimentality
One Of Solomon's Concubines, Dying, Exults In Her Virginity
The Persistance Of Nature In Our Lives
Prayer
Returning Home To Babylon
Saints And Strangers: 8. Saints And Strangers
Sentimental Dangers
Sidney Lanier In Montgomery: August 1866
Something Wakes Me Up
Sotto Voce
The Southern Crescent Was On Time
The Stoker's Sunday Morning
Two Worlds Of Sleep
Walking The Idiots
Where The River Jordan Ends
Zelda Sayre In Montgomery: 1942
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 82 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (P) (November 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395393833
• ISBN-13: 978-0395393833
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,569,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andrew Hudgins is the author of seven books of poems, including SAINTS AND STRANGERS, THE GLASS HAMMER, and ECSTATIC IN THE POISON. A finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, he is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships as well as the Harper Lee Award. He currently teaches in the Department of English at Ohio State University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best poetic publishing debuts in recent history., September 7, 2004

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Saints and strangers (The Houghton Mifflin new poetry series) (Hardcover)

Andrew Hudgins, Saints and Strangers (Houghton Mifflin, 1985)

Saints and Strangers may be the single best debut book of poetry I have ever read. Hudgins, who has since gone on to what amounts to true fame in the poetry world (read: having published a piece of prose in the Poets on Poetry series of books), had obvious talent from the get-go, and subsequent releases have shown that this wasn't a fluke, which makes it all the more wonderful. He has a natural flair for word choice, an excellent grasp of image, and mostly gets the line breaks right. A representative sample from the eight-poem-long title piece:

"...They punched him down, took turns kicking his ribs,

while thirty old women and sixteen men

sat slack-jawed in their folding chairs and watched.

Just twelve, not knowing what to do, I launched

int "Amazing Grace"-- the only hymn

I knew by heart-- and everybody sang.

We sang until the hunters grew ashamed

-- or tired-- and left, taking their guns,

their faces red and gleaming from the work...."

("At the Piano")

Yes, Hudgins' work is probably not something to read while entertaining thoughts of slitting one's wrists.

He only gets it really, hilariously wrong once:

"In Northern Germany the bogs dispense

the modern bodies of prehistoric men,

the corpses lugubriously bobbing up

like a fragile, slow, insistent dream..."

("The Bog of the Fathers")

"Lugubriously" is not a word that should have ever been used in a poem, and the good cod willin' and the cricks don't rise, it never will be again.

Still, despite that and a minimum of line break problems, Saints and Strangers is an awe-inspiring piece of work. Poetry lovers and non-poetry lovers alike, this one's for you. **** ½