While We've Still Got Feet (Paperback)

by David Budbill (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Budbill's career, that of one of the most readable American poets ever, divides neatly into two parts. During the first, he wrote very prosy yet deeply musical poems about the citizens of Judevine, a small town near a mountain of the same name in northern New England. After gathering them all in Judevine (1991) and jimmying them a bit to produce a hit-anywhere-but-on-Broadway play and an opera libretto, he switched from writing about to being Judevine. That is, he assumed the persona of a poet-hermit living on the mountain and taking its name, in imitation of the legendary eighth-century Chinese poet Han Shan (in English, Cold Mountain). The persona fits Budbill to a tee. It's the perfect vehicle for producing poems that alternately bask in and revile reclusiveness, celebrate both wilderness and the urban whirl, revel in worldly appetites and fleshly beauty, ruefully acknowledge aging and loss, and here, in response to current events, rail at "the emperor" and his destructive works. Unlike the Judevine character poems, the Judevine persona poems are mostly short and short lined, far more obviously poetic (they even sport internal, if not end, rhymes), and more often hilarious than not. If you think you'll never like poetry, try Budbill, and if you think you like most poetry, try him, too. Either way, bet you'll like him. Ray Olson
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Product Description

Familiar to listeners of National Public Radio, David Budbill is beloved by legions for straightforward poems dispatched from his hermitage on Judevine Mountain. Inspired by classical Chinese hermit poets, he follows tradition but cannot escape the complications and struggles of a modern solitary existence. Loneliness, aging and political outrage are addressed in poems that value honesty and simplicity and deplore pretension.

For more than three decades, David Budbill has lived on a remote mountain in northern Vermont writing poems, reading Chinese classics, tending to his garden and, of course, working on his website. Budbill has been featured more than any other author on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (July 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155659223X
• ISBN-13: 978-1556592232
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #192,981 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Made Me Dance, September 24, 2005

By	Mark Blucher (Danby, VT United States) - See all my reviews

I rarely, if ever, read poetry but this book jumped out at me while browsing Elliot's in Seattle. I think it was the cover that first attracted my attention but then I was pulled into the stories that the author relates, the journeys on which he goes, the ideas that begin to be dislodged from far corners of the readers mind, the sadness of our world, the happiness in his life even on Judvine Mountain, the resignation of age and yet the joy of experience and discovery. The last poem in the series certainly sets it all up though the reader will find many others throughout that will capture the imagination. I liked the concept of following in the footsteps of earlier chinese poets and longed for the ability to discriminate among types of writing. It's a good read, over, and over, and over.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars simple pleasures abound, August 12, 2005

By	Patti L. Lanich (vermont) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

these poems are delightful and thoughtful musings about life as David and all of us live it. they are mostly simple reflections about daily live with quotes from a chinese writer who is long gone yet current in its impact. i like rereading these because i can go deeper and find the humor.

5.0 out of 5 stars Dealing with Life ... and Death, July 17, 2006

By	Clare Dalton (Boston MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Budbill keeps you honest. Perhaps you don't live in a mountain cabin far from the bustle of humanity, but it turns out the issues are the same for you as for him -- and he has more time to think about them. Aging, death, ambition, the lure of solitude and the simple life, but also the lure of city lights and society. He has his own companions and interlocutors among the Eastern poets; make this Western poet one of yours.