The Bourgeois Poet

by Karl Shapiro

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, appointed the fifth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1946.

Reviews

[Tom Romig · Rating 5 out of 5]

You want somebody who has a fresh take on life and love and relationships and pretty much everything else, then Karl Shapiro is for you. I first became aware of The Bourgeois Poet from a small piece in the August 30, 2012 New York Times. "To celebrate (or bemoan?) the new academic year, ArtsBeat asked staff members and readers of The New York Times to recommend books that are set in or around schools."--John Williams. Dwight Gardner, book critic, recommended The Bourgeois Poet: "I'd never heard of Karl Shapiro's 'Bourgeois Poet' (1964)--part memoir in verse, part existential rant, part squeamish academic satire--until Jim Harrison [one of my favorite authors] proposed an offbeat essay about it to me a few years ago, when I worked as an editor at The New York Times Book Review. Now I've pawed through it two or three times, always finding new lines to admire, fresh in their strangled agony. ('New York, killer of poets, do you remember the day you passed me through your lower intestine?')"

[Hans Ostrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leave it to Shapiro the contrarian to write about his middle-class life as a poet-editor-professor precisely when it was not just hip but de rigeur to mock bourgeois life (1960s). With this book, Shapiro jumped with both feet into free verse after writing adept, modern verse in a variety of forms. The poems are vivid, funny, absurd, honest, and self-ironic. A very satisfying book.

[Hal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly brilliant ! ! Sadly, a number of Karl Shapiro's books are out of print. Finding them (on http://isbn.nu . . . or in libraries) is well worth the effort. This one is one of my particular favorites.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sort of book you must return to again later on (when you have learned some and forgotten more). Distinctly American.