The Porcupine's Kisses by Stephen Dobyns

The Porcupine's Kisses by Stephen Dobyns

Stephen Dobyns exposes the bruised male ego in this innovative and wildly original book of prose poems, maxims and definitions, with pictures by Howie Michels. The barbed and wistful poems feature men looking back over past failures and successes, intercut with tart one-liners or considerations - like La Rochefoucauld's maxims brought painfully up to date. Dobyns' spikiest book ends with his own devil's dictionary in which his sharp quill pricks our pretensions, evasions and delusions by mischievously revealing the real, possible or covert meanings of words we use every day. Stephen Dobyns is one of America's leading poets. He is a spinner of dark, extravagant fables of a world we live or may live in. They present a view of what it means to be human which is at once both funny and bleak, compassionate and remorseless. His is a world haunted by regret, driven by desire and need, illuminated by daring make-believe. In his often frightening and sometimes strangely funny poems, Stephen Dobyns creates a remarkable bridge between pure entertainment and deep psychological insight.

Arrestingly crisp tales told from a middle distance between fantasy and allegory..the forms of loss that pervade so many lives are the submerged subject of these powerfully realised poems... The invitation is to see the fantastic as routine, as one does in Kafka. * New York Times *

Stephen Dobyns teaches in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College, Massachusetts. He has published ten books of poetry. His nineteen novels include Cold Dog Soup, which was made into a film, and ten titles in his Charlie Bradshaw detective series. His most recent works of fiction are a novel, Boy in the Water (1999), and a book of short stories, Eating Naked (2000). His first collection, Concurring Beasts, was the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1971. Black Dog, Red Dog was the winner of the 1984 National Poetry Series competition. Cemetery Nights was chosen for the Poetry Society of America's Melville Cane Award in 1987. He has also published a book of essays on poetry, Best Words, Best Order (St Martin's Press, 1996). Five of his poetry books have been published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books: Cemetery Nights (1991), Velocities: New & Selected Poems (1994), Common Carnage (1998), Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides (2000) and The Porcupine's Kisses (2003).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781852246372
ISBN 10	1852246375
Title	The Porcupine's Kisses
Author	Stephen Dobyns
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Year published	2003-09-25
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable