The Book of Answers

by Herb Kauderer

A chapbook of answer poems: poems written in response to another poet's work.

Genres: Poetry

44 pages

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Herb Kauderer is an associate professor of English at Hilbert College and author of over a thousand poems including the book Flying Solo: The Lana Invasion [2017]. His writing has been nominated for many awards including the Pushcart, the Rhysling, the Elgin, the Dwarf Star, the Asimov's Readers, the Analog AnLab Readers, and more.

Reviews

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy Herb Kauderer's poetry very much. It is not hard work to read, which isn't to say the poems are simple. I'm looking forward to reading them again and reviewing the book more fully, if briefly, prior to voting on the Elgin Award for which it has been nominated.

[Mary Soon Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summer-reading book review #26: "The Book of Answers," by Herb Kauderer. This is a chapbook of answer poems: poems written in response to another poet's work. By turns humorous, honest, strange, these poems moved me and delighted me. They are also very quotable. For instance there are two lines from 'after "there are moments after sex"' that go "sometimes after sex I think//of vacuuming the car" (the whole poem is highly quotable). Or from "blissful ignorance" there is: "what//could be better//than to be a cow//on a sunny morning in June ... standing//with a small herd of family//knee-deep in food". And from "Jennifer's World" there's "while a child looks up//into an altitude of grown-ups."

[Timons Esaias]

This is a potentially very expensive book, because it refers do the works of at least two dozen other poets, and then you have to chase down those folks and buy their books...

Still, answer poems have a long tradition, and it's nice to see someone work the genre strenuously. Kauderer doesn't stick to just one type of "answer" either. Some of these are responses to specific poems, some to whole books, some to the poets themselves, and one to Robin Williams, on the basis of Dead Poets Society. (Full disclosure, one of the poems is a response to my own "Dark Matter")

While I'm honored to be a respondee, my favorites were the last poem ("when fifty winters besiege me") for William Shakespeare, and the first poem, "Best Wishes."