|
The Book of Kong
Copyright © 1986
by William Trowbridge
Iowa State University Press;
reprinted by Smallmouth Press
|
Trowbridge has something close to the ideal balance between counting the streaks of the
tulip and being chiefly conversant about general truth. He is very much up on the
peculiarities of our little time in the world. ... He is both funny and
serious, seriously funny;
probably the best, if not the only, way of dealing
with the complex
predicament. — Howard Nemerov
|
The Complete Book of Kong
Copyright © 2003
by William Trowbridge
Southeast Missouri State UP
|
The Complete Book of Kong gathers the poetic wit, woe, and wisdom of both new and
favorite
Kong poems — from William Trowbridge's previous books, and from numerous literary magazines
and anthologies — into a collection that will rattle your cage. Kong is hip and horrendous,
always terribly in love with a small screaming blonde, and still bearing the biggest, brightest
heart
Hollywood has ever broken. Kong treads fortissimo where mortals fear to go and holds
forth
in these poems with the fresh, no-nonsense voice that makes Trowbridge one of poetry's most
cutting-edge bards. — from the publisher
Everyone knows that Kong is one of the great American shows, but now he has grown even larger
than the wide screen. The Kong poems placed together in one book affirm him as an authentic
American icon. There is nothing like him anywhere else in the serious, sour world of poetry.
— Paul Zimmer
Read these poems because they'll make you laugh, and while you're laughing you might notice
you are learning something — for as Kong explores what it means to be inhuman, he shows
us what it means to be human. &#`151; Beth Ann Fennelly
What could have been just a thinly clever idea ("Hey, what if King Kong joined a vaudeville
act?") becomes, instead, a smart, funny mythology our our times. ... Ah, let us all be willing
Fay Wrays in the large, loving, capable hands of William Trowbridge. — Albert Goldbarth
|
ENTER DARK STRANGER
Copyright © 1989
by William Trowbridge
University of Arkansas Press
|
With this book, William Trowbridge shows himself to be one of
our most accomplished comic poets — able to wield a sardonic,
mythic humor that is the poetic equivalent to the great paintings
of Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. — Jonathan Holden
Enter Dark Stranger is a show, a carnival, a
great state fair of a book
that, while entertaining and delighting us, enlightens
as well.
William Trowbridge reminds us of the terribly serious uses to
which comedy can be put, and of the near-limitless possibilities of
the dramatic creation of character. This is a thoroughly
captivating collection of poems — surely one of the very best to be
published this year. — David Citino
... stunning first poetry collection. ... These poems are howlingly nasty and
perfectly executed. . . . Trowbridge's weapons are a deep puzzlement of
feeling and a wonderful ear; he knows how to divert with jokes while he's
about to attack: "BLAM BLAM BLAM!" — San Francisco Chronicle
|
FLICKERS
Copyright © 2000
by William Trowbridge
University of Arkansas Press
|
This collection of impressively well-wrought poems
is one in which many readers wil recognize and
better appreciate themselves and their lives. — Ray Olson, Booklist
|
O PARADISE
Copyright © 1995
by William Trowbridge
University of Arkansas Press
|
Continuing in this third collection of poems to
work in the realm of the seriocomic, Trowbridge explores
other borderlands — between the tangible world and
the intuitive one, between actuality and memory,
between consciousness and
unconsciousness, between self as flesh and blood and
self as ghost.
This is fast-paced, nervy poetry whose witty,
vernacular language moves
surprisingly toward transcendence. — from the jacket
In O Paradise, William Trowbridge has added
a new string to his full
harp. Although he retains his beguiling and entertaining
wit (who but
Trowbridge would have the pig open the door and
demand the wolf's
search permit?), he now faces Old Mortality more
squarely than before.
There is a new and singular strain of melancholy,
but it is a sadness
countered by the wisdom and spirit of a mature,
highly accomplished
artist, creating a powerful new tension in his
work. — Paul Zimmer
William Trowbridge can talk tough, in the tradition of
fiction's best
hard-boiled private-eye wisenheimers. And like those
steelyjawed
gumshoes, he can look at the tough sights unflinchingly:
at, for instance
the "brimstone-stinking forests" of World War II's
atrocities, and at the
dark side of our domestic confusions, "where
everything . . . goes
kerflooey." But, like the best of those detectives,
he has a warm center,
and the daily pleasures of small town life, of youthful
romance, of family
bonds, elicit a poignant wonderment. We have a lot of
weird mysteries
to solve, we human beings — and I'm glad William
Trowbridge is on the
case. — Albert Goldbarth
|
Ship of Fool
Copyright © 2011
by William Trowbridge
Red Hen Press
|
This book consists primarily of poems about a character based on the fool archetype, which
appears not only in silents and standups (e.g. Keaton, Pryor, Woody Allen) but also in tales
running back to the beginning of storytelling. To borrow from Yiddish comedy, he is a
combination of schlemiel and schlimazel. The difference is that the schlemiel is a bungler
who's always accidentally breaking things and spilling stuff on people and the schlimazel
is a sad sack who's always getting his things broken and getting stuff spilled on him.
My Fool is both. He is often treated harshly, which seems to come simply from his being
a fool. Most fool figures, though “comic,” are subjected to a great deal of violence.
The very term "slapstick" derives from this. — from the author
|
What the Critics Say
