Webb, Charles Harper, ed. Stand Up poetry; an expanded anthology.Univ. of Iowa Press. 322p. index, c2002. 0-87745-795-6. $24.95. SA Webb writes in his introduction: "Whatever the reasons, mainstream poetry has in the past fifteen years moved much closer to the Stand Up aesthetic." He defines Stand Up poems as ones that work well orally, are frequently characterized by a sense of humor Noun 1. sense of humor - the trait of appreciating (and being able to express) the humorous; "she didn't appreciate my humor"; "you can't survive in the army without a sense of humor" sense of humour, humor, humour , are sometimes irreverent and are "honest, unpretentious and strong." They're not anti-literary and are written for the printed page, so are not to be confused with performance/ slam poetry. Many of these poems, though, would be good performance pieces. The Beat poets were the precursors of this style. The poetry is also characterized by the use of "natural language," fanciful tone and the creation of bizarre worlds. The poems are infused with strong emotion, often have a narrative bent and reflect aspects of urban and popular culture. They are accessible rather than obscure. There are many poets represented in the collection. Some are well known, such as Billy Collins, Charles Bukowski “Bukowski” redirects here. For the auction house, see Bukowskis. Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was an influential Los Angeles poet and novelist. and Pattiann Rogers; others, less so. But they mostly have strong voices and the poems hit with emotional force. Christopher Buckley's "Sleep Walk" is a nostalgic lament on teenage love in the '50s, with references to the music of the period: " ... --and though we barely moved across/ the carpet to the Statues and "Blue Velvet," sparks/ stung our hands and pulled us into a world where/ you could get lost in no time...." Denise Duhamel in "Ego" recreates the feeling of incredible smallness a third grader might experience during an astronomy lesson with an orange, lemon and flashlight, her being " ... merely a pinprick pinprick Neurology A sharply focused stimulation of the skin, often by a needle, used to evaluate the sense of touch in one goosebump on the/orange." Playful irreverence describes John Gilgun's "Ars Poetica Ars Poetica is a term meaning "The Art of Poetry" or "On the Nature of Poetry". Early examples of Ars Poetica by Aristotle and Horace have survived and have since spawned many other poems that bear the same name. ," in which he pokes fun at what makes a good poem. Form varies from tightly constructed four-line stanzas to prose poems. Amy Gerstler's chilling prose poem, "An Unexpected Adventure," uses the cultural icon A cultural icon is an object or person which is distinctive to, or particularly representative of, a specific culture. An example is the bowler hat which could be considered an English cultural icon. Others include tea, The Beatles and association football. of Nancy Drew, always competent, who in a surprise twist is raped. This collection is an unexpected adventure. Not all the poems are funny but all present us with somewhat skewed skewed curve of a usually unimodal distribution with one tail drawn out more than the other and the median will lie above or below the mean. skewed Epidemiology adjective Referring to an asymmetrical distribution of a population or of data perceptions of the world that are all too real. Sue E. Budin, YA Libn., Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, city (1990 pop. 109,592), seat of Washtenaw co., S Mich., on the Huron River; inc. 1851. It is a research and educational center, with a large number of government and industrial research and development firms, many in high-technology fields such as P.L., Ann Arbor, MI |
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