Synopses & Reviews
The poems in Babylon in a Jar extend the forceful explorations that Andrew Hudgins began with Saints and Strangers, his first book and a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1985. Since then, he has probed the nature of Southern experience, the conflict between religion and worldliness, the origins of poetry, the exaltations and perils of family. In this volume he brings such issues down to the old conflict between order and disorder. He responds with passion to the natural world, to history, to inheritance: "before he flooded the rubble, he swept up the dust of Babylon / to give as presents, and he stored it in a jar." The breadth and sweep of these poems, their variety and fervor, surpass Hudgins's previous work in After the Lost War (winner of the Poets' Prize), The Never-Ending (a runner-up for the National Book Award), and The Glass Hammer.
Synopsis
These diverse poems of past and present, of order and disorder, press on with the forceful explorations that Andrew Hudgins began with his first book, SAINTS AND STRANGERS, a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1985. The wide-ranging poems in this new volume respond with passion to the natural world, to family life, to history, to inheritance: "before he flooded the rubble, he swept up the dust of Babylon / to give as presents, and he stored it in a jar."
About the Author
ANDREW HUDGINS is the author of seven books of poems, including Saints and Strangers, The Glass Hammer, and most recently Ecstatic in the Poison. A finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, he is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships as well as the Harper Lee Award. He currently teaches in the Department of English at Ohio State University.
Table of Contents
1 The Chinaberry 3 After Muscling Through Sharp Greenery 5 Poem ("Blunt daffodil spikes") 6 Ashes ("My left hand joggled Johnny's arm") 7 In the Red Seats 10 Edge 12 Dragonfly 13 Night Class 15 One Threw a Dirt Clod and It Ran 17 Signs of Change in Weather 18 Wind 19 Supper 21 The Daffodils Erupt in Clumps 22 We Were Simply Talking 24 Heaven 25 Elegy for the Bees 27 Bodies of Water 28 Babylon in a Jar 31
2 Catching Breath 37 Plunge 38 How to Stop 40 Ashes ("Bill gripped the can in both hands") 42 In Alesia 43 Rain 44 Purple 46 Ball 49 These Priveleges Doth the Wolf Hold to This Hour 51 Hail 52 Goat God 53 Plant Two Seeds 55 Keys 56 Hammer and Scourge 58 When the Weak Lamb Dies 59 Tools: An Ode 60 The Bottle Tree 61 Why Stop? 64 The Hanging Gardens 65 Stump 69
Acknowledgments 71