Felix Dennis, better known as the enfant terrible of magazine publishing and one of Britain's richest men, has — astonishingly — become Britain's best-selling poet with A Glass Half Full.

American novelist and critic, Tom Wolfe, calls Dennis "a twenty-first century Kipling" and says that his poetry 'rollicks and rolls with rhyme, meter, and melody.'

Now, gathered together with an American audience in mind, together with a spoken-word CD, comes a selection of Dennis's poems.

Whether reflecting ruefully on getting older, celebrating Bob Dylan, serenading the United States or sending up the clichés and stereotypes of our times, Felix Dennis reveals himself as a poet with an eye for the tender telling detail, and a powerful gift for communication. Funny, touching, frank, and uncompromising, A Glass Half Full is a wonderful and inspiring collection.

"'Stands the glass half empty,/ Or stands the glass half full?/ Hand me the decanter, man,/ I'll take another pull.' In September 1999, at the age of 52, while in the hospital for an unspecified disease, Dennis wrote his first poem-inspired by Dorothy Parker's 'Resume.' What followed is this book of 194 poems (originally published by Hutchinson in the UK), a 'spoken word' CD of Dennis reading (accompanied by haunting organ music) and a book tour called 'Did I Mention the Free Wine?' According to Miramax, Dennis aims to bring poetry back to the masses. However, occasional poetry readers might be better off sticking with Blake or Billy Collins. After all, Dennis, a multimillionaire and the founder of Maxim magazine, is still a novice poet, and his verses appear to be limited by the idea of what poetry is. Thus, the collection abounds with 'thees' and 'thous' and gamely adheres to wobbly rhyme schemes. There are glimmers of Dennis's way with words in this volume, mostly when he lets the language relax and his voice shines through. He can be funny and slightly bawdy, such as in the poem 'Five and a Bit,' which is in the shape of a phallus, or in 'The Better Man': 'You were the better at rolling reefer,/ I was the better with coke and rum;/ Remember that night on the beach at Ibiza?/ The Maori twins with the tattooed bum?' Interestingly, his true voice also seems to come out in the footnotes. There, he doesn't let awkward rhyme inhibit him, revealing that he plans to be mummified in a 'purpose-built pyramid' and detailing the virtues of a 'snake-hipped, suede-booted blonde.' Taken as prose poems, these footnotes may actually constitute some of the most entertaining, and most polished, works in the book. Illus." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Spanning the gamut of topics from sex to the Crusades, this is publishing juggernaut Felix Dennis's bracingly unconventional collection of verse. Line drawings throughout. Includes an audio CD of the poet reading his work.