Brain Camp (Pitt Poetry Series) - Award-Winning Poetry Collection for Literature Lovers & Book Clubs - Perfect for Reading, Gifting & Literary Discussions

An article by Charles Harper Webb, “The Limits of Indeterminacy: A Defense of Less Difficult Poems,” in the current issue of The Writer’s Chronicle made me want to make the acquaintance of Webb’s poetry, and I’m glad I did.In “Postmodernism Missed the Opry,” a poem in his latest collection Brain Camp complements his argument in the article and concludes:“Aesthetic distance is the valley betweenmountains full of deer , trout, bobwhitesand the pine-shaded shack where you were born.Postmodern is a city boy who’s never beenso lonesome he could cry – who’d neverwalk the line, sigh, “Hello, walls,” or waltzacross Texas – who thinks he’s too smartto place a rose from her own garden on the graveof his wife of fifty years – who hides,in an ice chest that should be full of longnecks,his really and truly cold, cold heart.”That poem and “The Good Survives” are more than worth the price of admission, and there are other fine poems besides.If you’ve written off contemporary poetry as something created by boring and incomprehensible folks for boring and incomprehensible folks, give it another chance with this clear and frequently hand-clappingly satisfying collection. (The academic crowd Webb argues against – “literaturists,” a poet friend once dubbed them – would, of course, hold their noses over my use of the word “satisfying.” The hell with them.)It startles me that Webb earns his living in academia. Pray for him.