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A Defense of Poetry (Pitt Poetry Series)

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A Defense of Poetry (Pitt Poetry Series) (Paperback)

by Gabriel Gudding (Author)

3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Review
"...a fearless attempt to alter normal poetry into complete tasteless context." -- Megan Dowdell, The Pitt News, Dec 5, 2002

"A Defense of Poetry is a hilarious act of verbal striptease." -- Isthmus Books Quarterly

"Gabriel Gudding's A Defense of Poetry is a work of absolutely mad absolute genius." -- Patrick Herron, Lester's Flogspot, Jan 10, 03, www.lesters.blogspot.com

"Gudding, in one of the freshest debuts in years, ... reminds us of art's central mission, which is ... to provoke." -- Fred Muratori, Rain Taxi, Spring 2003

"He has such humor and yet is not slapsticky. He's very intelligent and articulate...." -- Elizabeth Scanlon, Cornell Alumni Magazine, Nov/Dec 2002

"He is Whitman on nitrous." -- Willard Greenwood, Hiram Poetry Review, Spring 2003

"He is a different, altogether more serious (though more successfully funny) citizen of poetry." -- Ray McDaniel, The Constant Critic (Fence & Fence Books)

"He works masterfully with all the tools in the poet's kit. Great ear. Excellent prosody and diction. Surprising lines." -- Dale Smith in Possum Pouch, Spring 2003

"I'm surprised so quirky and playfully powerful a book could find a publisher....one humongous can of literary whoop-**s...." -- Jake Adam York, Cold Mountain Review, Fall 2002

"In a crowded field, Gudding’s work demands attention; less obviously ambitious first books run far greater risks of being overlooked." -- Stephen Burt, The Boston Review, April/May 2003

Product Description
Gabriel Gudding's poems not only defend against the pretense and vanity of war, violence, and religion, but against the vanity of poetry itself. Sometimes nestling in the lowest regions of the body, his poems depict invective, donnybrooks, and chase scenes, as well as the indignities and bumblings of the besotted, the lustful, the annoyed, and the stupid. In short, Gudding seeks to reclaim the tasteless. Innovative, edgy, and dark, here is a writer unafraid to attack the unremitting self-seriousness of so much poetry, laughing with his readers as he twists the elegiac, lyric "I" into a pompous little clown.

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Product Details

Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press (November 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822957868
ISBN-13: 978-0822957867
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 0.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #846,904 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

20 Reviews

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

Average Customer Review

3.9 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gudding will not tire, will not falter, and will not fail, January 26, 2003

By	Geoffrey Gatza - See all my reviews

Perhaps the only more powerful person than Gabe Gudding in the international banking communities of Wall St., London, and Zurich is Greenspan. When Gabe Gudding decides to make a deal, the Fortune 500 feels the impact as if an earthquake hit. Politicians know not the mess with Gabe because he can break any one of them. However, Gabe's world changes when Robert Lowell enters his life.

Though seven decades younger than him, Gabe covets Robert like he has not desired any person or thing in years. Gabe treats his approach to Robert the way he handled a business deal using any means, including immoral to obtain his wants. He gains his inner secrets that he provides to a poetics professor he arranged for him to see. However, as he obsesses over him, Gabe's world begins to crash around him, leaving him with few options.

Defense of Poetry is an entertaining tale centering on the potential destructiveness of obsession. The story line is more of a character study than a thriller as Humpty Dumpy provides a deep look into Gabe and Robert's thought processes and inner gut emotions. Graphic sex scenes may turn off some readers, but add to the overall feel of the reader being an observer. Though the subplot involving the law and killers subtract from the tale by trying to twist it into a thriller, the obsession which is the main story line brilliantly works leading to a fabulous absorbing look at extreme behavior.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Odd, Very Weird, and Very Brilliant Book, October 29, 2002

By	Robert Dobei (New York) - See all my reviews

The title poem, "A Defense of Poetry," is one of the funniest, saddest, strangest and most inspired poems I have ever read. (Indeed, I see from the acknowledgements page that the poem is forthcoming in a Scribner anthology entitled _Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present_). The irreverence of many of the poems in the book is justified -- or excused -- by the sheer verbal brilliance and imaginative ingenuity of this poet. This is a highly learned writer. The book is just an imaginative tour de force. It reminds me of Stevens' _Harmonium_. The poems in this book are incredibly varied: they range from the formal and crafted to an almost avant-garde (and even whacked or disturbed) kind of poem. But each poem is marked by a peculiar mixture of intelligence, gravity, comedy, and emotion that I have never seen before. This book is going to change how we think about poetry -- and I look forward to more from this odd, new, and weirdly brilliant poet. -- Robert Dobei

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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this book is the bomb, March 23, 2003

By A Customer

This is the funniest book of poems I've ever read, but it's much more than that. It's a Rubicon moment. Will poetry continue to be "ruled with the scepter of the dumb, the deaf, and the creepy," as Kenneth Koch once wrote, or is it time again to "Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" (Walt Whitman). If you want reassuring pablum, read Phil Levine and others so beloved by the timorous part-time teaching assistant from New Jersey. If you want the top of your head taken off, though, you want "A Defense of Poetry."

This book made me laugh so hard that my husband demanded I read great hunks of it aloud. Which I did, with pleasure, because Gabriel Gudding has a sensational ear. He has timing to die for. And the stuff he's going after -- rage, aggression, terror, stupidity -- is big game. I find it hard to overstate the sorts of claims that this book has made on my attention. In one reading, it became _the_ book I will look to as a touchstone and as crucial sustenance in an age of bombast and bushwhackery.

This is an essential book for any reader ready to dispense with the literary equivalent of Sominex in favor of expanding his or her sense of the possibilities for poetry. I commend Gabriel Gudding (whom I have never met) for writing it, and I greet him at the beginning of a brilliant career.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Matt
This is a great book. The poet uses humor to comment on the human condition. It says so much about life, hate and love. Read more

Published on November 26, 2006 by Matthew Anderson

5.0 out of 5 stars poop.
This Poop is brilliant. If you like Christopher Smart (Gabe's Smarter), Levine (Gabe's not nearly as boring), or Christopher Twigg (Gabe may be leafier)--you'll like this. Read more

Published on October 29, 2004 by Aught

4.0 out of 5 stars Polarizing, Brilliant, and Ultimately Academic (cont.)
(. . . continued)

I relish the idea that Gabe is as ballsy as some other reviewers feel he is. I want to see heads roll and walls tumble in the contemporary kingdom of poetry... Read more

Published on March 9, 2004 by Bobmacabre

3.0 out of 5 stars Polarizing, Brilliant, and Ultimately Academic
Gabe Gudding may very well be a genius.
Gabe Gudding may very well be a psychopath.
It's interesting that none of the other reviews (as of this writing) for this book are... Read more

Published on March 5, 2004 by Bobmacabre

5.0 out of 5 stars For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
This book has a tough time getting put down, but not a tough time getting... yada, yada. It's an interesting, intelligent, original, & entertaining (like movie... Read more

Published on January 21, 2004

1.0 out of 5 stars Poetry Written By The Intimidated
I'm not a poet, nor do I have a Ph.D., although I have wasted my time on occasion--Here's one reason why some reviewers writing here try to make this book of fart jokes into... Read more

Published on January 18, 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Ode on a Grecian Formula (or something to that effect)
If you happen to be serious (and by serious I don't mean "serious," I mean SERIOUS) fan of poetry, you have found the right book here. Read more

Published on November 19, 2003 by Kelly Langston-Smith

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is A bomb
When I buy a joke book, I want the jokes to be funny and these ones are. So this is a good joke book. Read more

Published on November 6, 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars New
Contrary to the reader below from San Diego, I don't find the book terrible
and pointless at all. Read more

Published on October 25, 2003 by A Reader

1.0 out of 5 stars A Defense of What?
Criticize these poems at all and you risk playing the straight man to a comedian who has already personally queued the laugh-track--this book's neat little trap. Read more

Published on October 9, 2003

› See all 20 customer reviews...

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