[.ca] A Defense of Poetry (ISBN 0822957868)

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 very fair or even very helpful . . . when taken alone, but as a collection, they are more or less adequate. All are either 1 star or 5 stars, ranting or raving. Gabe Gudding is the kind of poet that inspires a great deal of ranting and raving, and possibly some humming, as well. If he had no other skill as a writer, (to my mind) this alone would make him a good poet. The main failing of our poets today is the inability to affect. Gabe affects. Not only does he affect, he infects. In fact, I had to buy this book because I was infected by Gabe. First the polarized reviews intrigued me, then the online samples of Gabe's work baffled me, and finally Gabe's blog left me frightened and bothered. A little voice in my head made it quite clear that I was to purchase A Defense of Poetry without any further hesitation. One of my major motivations was to write a 3 star review on Amazon. I had been entertaining the fantasy that Gabe himself had written all of the other reviews here under pseudonyms. His blog, after all, is so riddled with impersonations. Gabe Gudding is an infectious disease. Any poet writing today that can be an infectious disease is an important poet, a poet to be watched. In Gabe's case, he may also be a poet to be surveilled . He should not, for instance, be left alone with your family pet. Here's some quick Q & A from my middle of the road, 3 start mentality. Is Gabe a genius? Maybe. Is A Defense of Poetry a great book? No. It's an important book. Why is ADoP not a great book, but an important book? Because it engages in wonderfully radical cage rattling, yet the rattling is not being done by barbarians at the gate, but by that high Roman inside the cage. Ultimately, this makes ADoP more of a freakish curiosity than a true siege of the kingdom. And I find this a bit frustrating, because I am convinced Gabe has the firepower to lay wonderful siege. At the bottom line, ADoP is like an "authoritative" report on the existence of WMDs given by a government who feels the need to falsify a report on WMDs to justify its morally questionable actions. Gabe, you would make such a splendid barbarian, but you are working for the Man! Gudding's feeling for sound is pretty much unparalleled. His knowledge does seem encyclopedic (to excess). His cleverness is monstrous and lovely. And he's darn funny much of the time (I love his heroic little effigy on the book's cover, complete with P-emblazoned chest and purple cape). I don't get the academic in jokes for the most part, and Gabe's ultimate objective (if there is one) is lost (to me) in the abstracted and rampant wowing his erudite circus act inflicts on the audience. Quite possibly, I'm just not smart enough or educated enough to "get it". Maybe the whole thing is one of those post-modernist ha-has that SEEMS to have an objective, but doesn't, for, alas, all is meaningless. I hope not, because if that was true, then I would have to classify Gabe as a dope (and a dupe), and I don't want to do that. I don't want Gabe to be classified or in any way contained. (to be continued . . .)

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. But if Gabe is a performance-artist-in-print trying to cut down the entire forest with a herring . . . the joke is only on him and not on Poetry at all. Gudding may have the charisma to command the barbarian hordes, but the hordes don_t live inside the academy walls . . . they_re in the wild. I think Gabe needs more canon fodder from the wilds (rather than the _canon_ fodder of academia). He_s got a big, black, iron gun, but he_s stuffing it full of the kind of yellowed pages Eliot and Pound drooled lasciviously over and were later castrated for. It needs buck shot and marbles, big hunks of porcelain, gravel, locusts and walnuts, coke bottles (reissues of the old fashioned ones), and the rusted pieces of transmissions. Too often ADoP is a gun that SAYS _Bang!_ rather than GOES _Bang!_ The poem _Hair_ kind of sums it up for me. I have a personalized interpretation for it (not a universal one). Gabe busts out the convicts by hiding them in his hair. His hair is big because his head is full of large, wild, and powerful thoughts. These thoughts are large enough to _contain multitudes_, and that means some darkness. Well, good for him! And good for Poetry. But what does our big gunned Gabe go and do? He runs right to his buddy Pete, the Dante professor. That is, he takes his dark and wild thoughts and he stuffs them back into his classical, academic, insipidly trivialized intellect. And what_s the result? The wild darkness gets trapped into a wig, and then a handbag, and then a backpack, and then a suitcase, and then a trunk, and THEN back into his hair/intelligence. The wildness has been much muffled. In the end, he can only walk and weep in confusion. Now, _Hair_ is a good poem. And it_s very honest in the right kind of way (not that self-absorbed, icky confessional way). But it is tragic. I feel for both Gabe and for poetry. I hope Gabe can figure out what to do with the convicts, and I also hope he doesn_t mistake them for peacock rectums or impulses to harm animals. I wish Gabe_s angry stream of consciousness ran headlong into academic poets and the ivory towers of academic thinking rather than dogs and other simple non-intellectual creatures. It is a disservice to all of us that Gabe has chosen to reside in his butt (_Statement_), because the guy is a brilliant freak with talent WAY out the wazoo. Ultimately the scatological humor strikes me as less a dung pie in the face of high-mindedness and academic elitism (as many claim) than the subconscious excrement flung loose from a very high-minded academic intelligence stuck in an abstract feedback loop. It is not so much flung as shed . . . and if we track him by his droppings we_ll find him snuggly nestled into the den of the classical literature library of University-X. Now all someone needs to do is bust into said library and stuff Gabe in your hair, take him out to the barbarous woods, and release him into the wild. Then, we might end up with one of the rare great poets of our greatness-starved era. And Gabe . . . good luck with that butt thing. (4 stars this time to equal 3.5 overall)

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 something grand like actual poetry: 1) the people writing here aren't very good poets. 2) Because they are not very good poets, they cannot distinguish between genuine sentiment and mawkishness in poetry. 3) Because they cannot distinguish between genuine sentiment and mawkishness in poetry, they cravenly edit out anything approaching sentiment, genuine or mawkish, in their own work. 4) They admire poets like Gudding, who do the same, and self-interestedly praise him. (Also, you can replace the words "genuine sentiment and mawkishness" with "linguistic talent and tin-eared clanking" or whatever other challenges you see to be a part of poetry writing.) Secondly, one reviewer compared Gudding, a mid-level resident on the hierarchy of M.F.A., Inc., who writes about the human digestive tract for joking purposes, to Christopher Smart, who, while suffering the wounds of mental disorder, praised all atomies in their relation to God. Brilliant Christopher Smart's belief system ideally manifests itself in great good works. Does whatever belief system you can superimpose on Gudding's work do the same? (And if you answer this rhetorical question with incoherent, badly considered nonsense, know that I'm onto it.)

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. For far too long, modern poetry has been flaggelating itself like a monk with impure thoughts trying to bleed the depth and breath and pathetic pathos of human experience through a bloody back covered in sackcloth and .... Poetry has become rot. The stuff of the morbid Oprah novel and the goth band lyric. Well I am here to tell you that in 90 short pages, Gabriel Gudding has fixed all of that. Taken poetry back from the furrowed brow and placed the Grecian urn back on the mantle. Sure, it is funny, which may offend "serious" minded individuals, but it is also witty and poignant and full of mirth and terror. Gudding turns a phrase like few I have experienced. His use of alliteration and imagery and even (gasp) words that rhyme is so adept that it makes even some of his less serious moments shine. Poets privately think of themselves as terribly clever, but Gudding has out-clevered us all. You may think that you are the frontrunner in the Kentucky Derby, but Gudding is already at home composting the floral horseshoe. I got SUCH a kick out of this book. The first poem from which the book derives its name will hook you into continuing as it is the most viscious, visceral (not to mention outright funny) invective since Jesus lambasted the Pharasees in Matthew 23. This will move you to later and more epic themes like the hard fought battle with 9th century vikings entitled "How I Caught My Cold." Or the thrill of the unique sporting event known as "The Pallbearer Races." Or the terrible conflict between a mother duck and Humpty Dumpty entitled "Adolescence." Or the gasping horror of being chased down by the unstoppable "Coalman" over a stolen lantern. These are all longer pieces (usually two to four pages), but there are certainly shorter works here as well that smack just as true. "After Yeats" has been copied into my personal volume of favorite poetry. The temptation, of course, is to start simply copying lines from the book to make you see how good it really is, but there isn't room for that here. You will have to mine the lines out for yourselves and share the best ones with whoever happens to be within reach as you are reading. So have I gone a tad bit overboard in singing the praises of this thin blue volume. I certainly don't think so. For years, I have been slogging through copious amounts of heart-killing rather than heart-rending poetry while waiting for this exact experience. It is about flaming time!

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 entertainment=fun) collection of poetry, regardless of Christopher Smart's socks or whatever.