Product Description

A selection of poetry by Denise Duhamel, in which she suffers postmodernist angst when using the "therapeutic I". The volume features poems from Duhamel's five previous collections, which include "Smile!", "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Girl Soldier".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #471249 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 120 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Somewhere between Sex and the City, Sharon Olds and Spalding Gray lies the poetry of Denise Duhamel, who in six volumes during the 1990s (all from small independent or small university presses) established herself as a vivacious, sarcastic, uninhibited and sometimes sex-obsessed observer of contemporary culture. Long fascinated by downtown New York, Duhamel got poetic mileage from her once-rough neighborhoods. Now she lives and teaches in Miami: this new-and-selected sums up her NYC years. The weakest poems come first. "Sometimes the First Boys Don't Count" could be Olds exactly ("I swallowed like a brave girl taking her medicine"); "Bulimia" predictably evokes "the palate hidden and secret as a clitoris." Later Duhamel found ways to write about sex and sexual politics without being bound to confessional realism. The Woman with Two Vaginas from 1995 claimed to translate Inuit tales: "He-Whose-Penis-Never-Slept," the title poem, and others found mythological parallels for dilemmas women still face. Kinky (1997), a series of poems about Barbie, played on the doll's status as ironic ideal: when "Barbie Joins a Twelve Step Program," having "been kidnapped by boys/ and tortured with pins," she realizes her "God must be Mattel." Duhamel's most recent work finds two new subjects: her husband's Filipino culture and language, and her position in the poetry world: "I was suddenly angry at my dad for not being Ashbery." (Apr.)Forecast: With its self-conscious ease, its nervous in-jokes and its general lack of formal interest, Duhamel's work will be held up as a model by few highbrow critics. On the other hand, its humor, anger and forceful personality could make the book a genuine popular hit.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Duhamel is an entertainer, as her new, retrospective collection confirms. Her earliest poems are the most serious in tone, portraying such matters of sex and self-respect as fat thighs and bulimia with compassionate understanding. Her versions of sexually charged Inuit myths and famous fairy tales are lighter, though thoughtfully bemused rather than comic. Humor really enters her work in a series about the Barbie doll, which she treats as a toy made of plastic yet possessed of consciousness and conscience. In her most recent work, her poet friends and poet husband figure prominently, and her sexual-political concerns merge vitally with her everyday life. Throughout the book, each poem is utterly engaging, as hard to abandon as a chapter in a taut thriller. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Bangungot
Barbie As Religious Fanatic
Barbie Joins A Twelve Step Program
Barbie's Gyn Appointment
Bisexual Barbie
Bluebeard's One-hundredth Wife
Bulimia
Cockroaches
David Lemieux
The Difference Between Pepsi And Pope
Ego
Fear On 11th Street And Avenue A, New York City
Feminism
For The One Man Who Likes My Thighs
Four Hours
Him-whose-penis-never-slept
The Hollow Men
How Much Is This Poem Going To Cost Me?
How The Sky Fell
How To Help Children Through Wartime
Id
June 13, 1995
Kinky
The Limited Edition Platinum Barbie
Literary Barbie
Lorca's Deli, New York City, Sels
Making Money
Marriage
Mia And Darger, Ashbery And Gina
Mr. Donut
My Grandmother Is My Husband
Nick At Nite
One Afternoon When Barbie Wanted To Join The Military
Oriental Barbie
Playa Naturista
The Raping Of The Sun
Reminded Of My Biological Clock-while Looking At Georgia O'keeffe's..
Sex With A Famous Poet
The Shore, Sels
Sometimes The First Boys Don't Count
Summer
Superego
The Ugly Stepsister
Vagina
What Happened This Week
When I Was A Lesbian
Whole
The Woman With Two Vaginas
Yes
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Customer Reviews

It's delicious it's delovely it's Denise Duhamel
Denise Duhamel's poems amuse the muse. She can make you laugh; she can astound you with the turns her mind takes. She knows the difference between day and night, between Pepsi and Coke, and between Pepsi and Pope. In David Lehman's words, "With her cunning ingenuity she can talk on almost any subject, and this conversational ease as much as her celebration of culture and her good humor and deadpan funniness make her an excellent example of New York School poetics."

Definitely a Woman
Denise Duhamel is very much so a woman. Her poems deal with modern day issues of women today, and still have the sound and rhythym that is appealing to the mind. In one collection you can take a trip down memory lane and think back on the nights where you would stay up watching television like "Nick at Nite" or the day you felt beautiful for the first time and felt like you could be completely exposed in front of someone like in "For the One Man Who Likes My Thighs". Women can relate to the pressures of being beautiful and somewhat psychotic efforts we take to get there. She's real.

Nick at Nite?
Upon reading her poem Nick at Nite, you will understand just why I like Ms. Duhamel's work. It's crass, frank, funny, and altogether moving. The only question I would pose her if I did have the chance is whether her play on the words Nick at Nite was intentional or not. Either way if you enjoy witty poems with a bit of sentimentality to it this book is for you.