Title: Making love to Roget's wife : poems new and selected /
Authors: Koertge, Ronald.
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press,
Year: 1997
Subjects: Poetry Collections
Abstract: In plain, unpretentious language, with brutal honesty, Ron Koertge can meld violence, love, human ugliness, joy, and modern depravity into a short lyric that makes us laugh out loud or socks us in the gut. His images arrive in giant clown shoes - cigars the size of Florida, the plastic man's counter-length arms - or neatly packaged in carefully observed detail, as he writes of the "black little hearts" of ants or an ape's "dark and leathery breast." Through every poem, there runs a constant and sincere humanity, a voice that laughs at itself, often goads us a bit, but always stuns and enlightens us when we discover something of ourselves gambling with the crowd at the racetrack, driving from the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant, or shambling with the distraught parent leaving the hospital.
Contents: The art of poetry -- What she wanted -- Loving ugly -- Ozzie Nelson dead of cancer -- Admission requirements of U.S. and Canadian dental schools -- Soothing the unheralded organs -- Panty hose -- Plastic man, alone in the luncheonette, reaches the length of the counter for the salt -- Beautiful eyes for a boy -- The manager of the drive-in dairy -- Secrets of writing revealed at last -- Things that make you so scared you can't swallow so you start to cry and you tell them that you'll do anything if they'll just leave you alone -- A dazed survivor recounts the events leading up to the tragedy -- Christmas card -- Moving day -- To impress the girl next door -- Guys at the races -- Future Farmers of America -- What a varied place the world is so trusting and strange so deserving of love and praise -- Victims -- Orphan -- Field report from Sodom -- Lazarus -- Mr. Big -- Killing time -- I never touch my penis --^