Diary of a Poem

Series

• Poets on Poetry

A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation.

Andrew Hudgins's Diary of a Poem is an engaging collection of essays that offers pleasure and profit to its readers. The title essay discusses the author's amusing travails as he attempts to write an ode about intestines, while other pieces explore the poetry of James Agee, Donald Justice, Allen Tate, and other poets, as well as the musician Johnny Winter, who is the subject of a rollicking segment about rock 'n' roll. More seriously, Hudgins writes with lively good humor about his tomato garden, the unread books piled up precipitously around his bed, and the emotional problems that led to an embarrassingly intimate, yet funny encounter with his father-in-law.

Diary of a Poem is lively, charming, often humorous, and a pleasurable read for the general reader and the poetry specialist alike.

Praise for Andrew Hudgins

"Hudgins . . . [is] one of the few poets of the American South who can be both solemn and sidesplitting in a single poem."
—Publishers Weekly

"Andrew Hudgins is a natural storyteller . . . The surface[s]  of Hudgins's poems—their quirky economy, the sheer music of his prosody—are so right because he goes so deep."
—Washington Post

Andrew Hudgins is Humanities Distinguished Professor in English at The Ohio State University and author of several books of poetry, including American Rendering: New and Selected Poems, Ecstatic in the Poison: New Poems, and After the Lost War: A Narrative.

Praise / Awards

• "Self-reflective and revealing - these galloping, erudite essays, diary entries, and interviews are fulfilling on multiple levels."
  —Jeffrey Cyphers Wright