Shut Up You're Fine: Instructive Poetry for Very, Very Bad Children [Hardcover]

Andrew Hudgins (Author), Barry Moser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2009

The wickedly funny collection of nursery rhymes for the South Park generation-illustrated by the incomparable Barry Moser. Andrew Hudgins, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-nominated author of the critically acclaimed Ecstatic in the Poison, brings us this new collection of laugh-out-loud tongue-in-cheek nursery rhymes that do for poetry what Edward Gorey did for cartooning. Illustrated by the distinguished artist and graphic designer Barry Moser, Shut Up, You're Fine! includes such heart-warming titles as "Playing Houth," "The Thumping of the Bed," "Two Starving Kids in Africa," and "Daddy, Are We Meat?

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As with all of HudginsÕ work, the enthralling narratives and simple verse transcend class and geography, but Shut UpÕs best feature is the combined didactic value of its title and its speakersÕ perspectives."-Washington City Paper

"[A] compelling and hilariously offensive little book."-January magazine

Praise for Andrew Hudgins and Barry Moser:
"Andrew Hudgins is a natural storyteller. . . . The surface of Hudgin's poems-their quirky economy, the sheer music of his prosody-are so right because he goes so deep."-The Washington Post

"Moser's work is never less than dazzling."-Newsweek

About the Author

Andrew Hudgins's previous poetry collections include Ecstatic in the Poison and Saints & Strangers, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; After the Lost War, which received the Poetry Prize; and The Never-Ending, a finalist for the National Book Award.

Barry Moser is a renowned artist, printmaker, and illustrator of many literary works, including Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. He won the American Book Award for design and illustration in 1982 and currently teaches at Smith College and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (March 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590201035
• ISBN-13: 978-1590201039
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,289,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Daddy, Are We Meat?, April 23, 2009

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shut Up You're Fine: Instructive Poetry for Very, Very Bad Children (Hardcover)

What happens when a Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist poet turns his considerable talents to subversive subject matter? This collection of 63 nursery-rhyme style poems (almost all of which appeared in reviews such as Antioch, Poetry, and TriQuarterly) is what happens. Most of the titles are innocuous, but others give a fair taste of the overall tenor of the book, such as "Daddy, Are We Meat?" or "The Thumping of the Bed" or "My Grandmother's Breasts." These are poems populated by little boys who masturbate and torture animals, pedophile priests and uncles, drunken teenage parents, and countless other nasty people. Satiric doesn't even begin to capture the odd mixture of jauntiness and grimness that these poems contain. Consider these lines from "The Cow":

When she grows too feeble to give us fresh cream,
We'll slit her red throat, hang her from a beam,
And pull out her insiders to throw to the dogs,
Just as we do when slaughter the hogs.
We've now owned six cows that I can remember,
We drain them and gut them, skin and dismember,
Package and label them, and suck up the freezer,
We all love beefsteak--from baby to geezer.

If you have a taste for the oddities of poetry, then this book is a must. It would also make a pretty fun gift for certain kinds of people (such as myself), who don't like poetry, but do have a taste for the macabre.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty simple really, August 23, 2009

By 

B. Wilfong (Newark, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shut Up You're Fine: Instructive Poetry for Very, Very Bad Children (Hardcover)

For the most part this is a lackluster collection of poems. I have not read much of Mr. Hudgins' poetry, but I assume this is not his greatest effort.
There are a few pieces that are quite witty, speak to a human truth, or have some redeeming theme. However, there are others that are completely inept in terms of their meter and prose, and others that are just downright lame attempts at shock value.
Poems such as "The Tooth Fairy" and "Starving Kids in Africa" seem to capture the mind of childhood, while others lack coherency and value. This is a small collection, and a quick read, but I doubt whether you will find anything "lasting" or significant about it. It is certainly not worth buying. Libraries are for poems such as these. You won't find the need to return to them again and again.
The drawings (there are not that many) by Barry Moser are quite fine.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great coffee table book, June 27, 2011

By 

Steven Nelson "Read in Flight" (Middle of Nowhere, US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shut Up You're Fine: Instructive Poetry for Very, Very Bad Children (Hardcover)

This little book has started more conversations sitting on the coffee table than anything else we have ever had out. People read the title and MUST pick it up to start reading. Great humor.