Old Gnu

by Charles Harper Webb

Beguiled by Webb's poetry since October '99, when I found myself in a bookstore poetry section unable to tear myself from Liver's marvelous poems, when a screaky voice, breaking my concentration, asks, Are you going to buy that book? 25 years go by, and Old Gnu-- this latest collection of driven, deeply remembered, funny/tragic, linguistically brilliant, brilliantly composed and moving explorations of the human experiment-- once again captures this reader's whole being. From "Dreadnought eggs" to the "pure pornography" of plants, from his "way of making turtles swim in air" to wondering if we are "a yeast infection in our Mother Earth?" Reader, I wholeheartedly recommend you buy this book, so you can delight in this Old Gnu street corner a capella elegy/panegyric. -Roger Weingarten

92 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2026

Reviews

[Maurya Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Few contemporary American poets can match Charles Harper Webb’s wild inventiveness, his savvy humor and deep humanity. His poems brim with the colorful, tactile, and sometimes surprising things of the world—from moray eels to electric zithers to chandeliers—as they explore how people navigate their daily lives in search of meaning and truth, those most elusive of grails. Whether charting his son’s forays into the world with tenderness and apprehension, lauding migrating monarch butterflies, or contemplating his own mortality, Webb deftly offers us startling insights that lead to a profound sense of the world as a dangerous, seductive, and incomparable place filled with nightmares and wonders, limitations and possibilities. How grateful I am for these poems that brilliantly entertain and instruct us simultaneously. -Maurya Simon