All Shook Up: Collected Poems About Elvis (Paperback)

by Will Clemens (Editor), Jon Hughes (Photographer)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Cornelius Eady, Joyce Carol Oates, Ai, Lucille Clifton and Thom Gunn are just a few of the poets who wax sentimental in All Shook Up: Collected Poems about Elvis, edited by Will Clemens, with 22 b&w photographs by Jon Hughes. David Wojhan imagines William Carlos Williams "Watching Presley's Second Appearance on `The Ed Sullivan Show': Mercy Hospital, Newark, 1956": "The tube,/ like the sonnet,/ is a fascist form./ I read they refused/ to show this kid's/ wriggling bum."

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 131 pages
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press; illustrated edition edition (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155728704X
• ISBN-13: 978-1557287045
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,236,811 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A caesura with Elvis, September 16, 2003

By	Glenda Weston (Sarasota, FL) - See all my reviews

This book does contain some great poetry, although the best one ever, ALL THESE YEARS OF TEARS by fan club president Thorne Peters was not among them. I thought a lot of it was corny and perhaps the compilers of this book could've been more selective in their choices.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Shook Up will surprise you, October 9, 2001

By	Toby Heman (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews

_All Shook Up_ will surprise you. The sheer number of serious poets who have written seriously about Elvis-from Bukowski to Ai-was a revelation to me. You won't find any puff homages (except maybe Richard Blessing's "Elegy") or cheesy verse love-letters here. On the other hand, if you've always thought of poetry as dry and elevated stuff, _All Shook Up_ will change your thinking on that count too. There's no shortage of humor and poetic play in the collection (Fleda Brown Jackson's "Elvis Reads" imagines Elvis doing a reading of Yeats), and many of the authors seem to acknowledge a soft spot in their heart for Elvis-or in the heart of America, at least. The intriguing and sometimes confessional contributor's notes in the back make that evident. Thanks to a smart introduction by the editor, Will Clemens, and original photographs by Jon Hughes which punctuate the text, _All Shook Up_ adds up to more than the sum of its parts. In the words of the editor, the collection is about the "connection between the historical and mythical status of Elvis and ... poetic imagery." In bringing together the high and the low of American cultural production, the collection makes a valid case for the continued relevance of poetic vision in a country that often seems to be (or wants to be) post-literary. You will discover from this collection that poetry, like Elvis, lives on in America.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must" for all Elvis fans everywhere, July 4, 2001

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Illustrated with the photography of Jon Hughes, All Shook Up is an amazing compendium of poetry about Elvis Presley. Will Clemens provides an informative introduction to poetry about a now legendary American music icon by a number of poets whose work ranges from 1957 to 1999 and is a "must" for all Elvis fans everywhere. Elvis Presley: Two minutes long it pitches through some bar:/Unreeling from a corner box, the sigh/Of this one, in his gangling finery/And crawling sideburns, wielding a guitar.//The Limitations where he found success/Are ground on which he, panting, stretches out/In turn, promiscuously, by every note./Our idiosyncrasy and our likeness.//We keep ourselves in touch with a mere dime:/Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs/He turns revolt into a style, prolongs/The impulse to a habit of the time.//Whether he poses or is real, not cat/Bothers to say: the pose held is a stance,/Which, generation of the very chance/It was on, may be posture for combat. Thom Gunn