Andrew Hudgins

I am so early still in exploring poetry. But while I find my way overall, I’m eager to look at contemporary poets, and I was attracted to this collection from Hudgins, described as humorous. Well it’s darkly humorous -- as I should have anticipated from the title and as is confirmed by a quote from Lon Chaney as the epigraph to the title poem: “The essence of true horror is a clown at midnight.” It’s a great poem -- the most memorable in this collection of 58 -- and begins:
Down these mean streets a bad joke walks alone,
bruised head held low, chin tucked in tight, eyes down,
defiant. He laughs and it turns to a moan.

He repeats some of those words and phrases through the rest of the poem and they echo, hauntingly.

A couple snips I especially liked in other poems, this from Swordfish:
My fingertips marveled at the silvery shimmer,
already less silver, less shimmery than when it lived.
I never again should cause flesh this beautiful
to be less beautiful, I thought.

and this from Now and Almost Now:
Under dawn light,
cars glow, and a paper,
heavy with yesterday,
reposes on the walk.

And my favorite of the collection, Night Harvest:
From my neighbor’s dark garden I harvested asparagus;
I pilfered slender spears from their feathery bed
and clipped buds of American Beauty. All spring
and into early autumn I savored a fragrance
redolent of theft. Through summer I plucked squash,
beans, and more squash from his vines.
In the yard where I watched his daughter marry,
I divided hostas by moonlight and daylilies too,
keeping half. My neighbor’s dead, the house for sale,
and after dark his garden’s mine to love and plunder.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)… (meer)