What do you think?
Upgraded to Serious
Heather McHugh presents a fast-paced, verbally dexterous, and brilliantly humorous book. Utilizing medical terminology and iconography to work through loss and detachment, McHugh’s startling rhymes and rhythms—along with her sarcastic self-reflection and infectious laughter—serve as antidotes to the sufferings of the world. Being “upgraded to serious” from critical condition is a nod to the healing powers of poetry.
"Not to Be Dwelled On"
Self-interest cropped up even there,
the day I hoisted three instead
of the ceremonially called-for two
spadefuls of loam
onto the coffin of my friend.
Why shovel more than anybody else?
What did I think I’d prove? More love
(mud in her eye)? More will to work?
(Her father what, a shirker?) Christ,
what wouldn’t anybody give
to get that gesture back?
She cannot die again; and I
do nothing but re-live.
"Not to Be Dwelled On"
Self-interest cropped up even there,
the day I hoisted three instead
of the ceremonially called-for two
spadefuls of loam
onto the coffin of my friend.
Why shovel more than anybody else?
What did I think I’d prove? More love
(mud in her eye)? More will to work?
(Her father what, a shirker?) Christ,
what wouldn’t anybody give
to get that gesture back?
She cannot die again; and I
do nothing but re-live.
- GenresPoetry
82 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
December 16, 2009
It took me a long time to begin to connect with these poems. I was over halfway through the book before they began to make sense. But eventually they took some shape. They never fail to be interesting, unusual reading, however. One or two are lovely. My favorite is a poem about family dogs. It's funny, and I liked very much that its rhymes were mid-line rather than at the end. Gets your attention, that does.
March 18, 2010
High Marks
McHugh’s first book, Dangers, published a decade after she entered Harvard at 17 to study with Robert Lowell, uses the virtuoso word play, double meanings, punning, the skillful use of syncopated rhythms and rhyming, the aphorisms, the satire, wit and brevity that epitomize her verse throughout her career, no matter the subject, though her subjects are usually prescient, pertinent to our lives, or both, and rarely conceited. In Dangers, she tackled the social-sexual-political issues of the 1970’s, with late Plath’s edginess (but not the confessional). In A World of Difference, her second book, she wrote,
. . . the poets,
who should have spoken for us, were busy
panning landscapes, gunning
their electrics, going
I I I I I . (“Blue Streak”)
With The Father of the Predicaments (2001) and then Eyeshot (2004), finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, McHugh took her gutsiness a step further, urged in that title poem, “The Father of the Predicaments,” to look at the world even more squarely than ever. Her new one, Upgraded to Serious, has as its subject the survival of the planet and the nature of “god” in a random, senseless, and cruel universe. McHugh remains satiric, witty, rambunctious, but––perhaps adding Jon Stewart to Robert Lowell and John Berryman as interlocutor––she is also darkly comic on the pressing issues. As always, she is pointed and epigrammatic. This world, the one God “made as only/lonely gods would do” (“Mourner’s Kaddish”) troubles the poet when “cruelty is king” (“And the Greatest of These”); when battered monkeys perform tricks at knife point; when sour scholars pontificate on life and humanity; when bad poetry, “the terrible lit//graffiti” (“Ill-Made Almighty”) afflicts us all. In this world, the poet thanks “no lucky stars for life: It wants to take a lover//limb from limb” (“And the Greatest of These”).
“My whole work is to catch the word by surprise, sneaking up on language, sneaking up on the world as it lurks in words,” McHugh has said. Upgraded to Serious includes extended word plays served in McHugh’s characteristic syncopated rhythms, double and triple entendres, true and slant rhymes, and alliterations. Take “Space Bar,” a riff on computer keyboards, monitors, the writer’s life, and spacing out:
Line up behind the space bartender
Is the meaning of it all, the vessels
marked with letters, numbers,
signs. Beyond the flats
the monitor looms. . .
. . . .
. . . . I have killed
many happy hours here,
with my bare hands, as TV
passes for IV, among
the space cadets and dingbats. (“Space Bar”)
Several poems take a futuristic twist. In “The Gift,” the poet depicts a sci-fi scenario of parallel universes, “mirror-mesmerized,” with decidedly different outcomes for each. Upgraded to Serious is, after all, McHugh’s honest, witty assessment of how the planet is faring in the first decade of the new century. “Study under Fire” strikingly imagines a tree reciprocating the love a fire is showing it, and asks, just how blind are we to nature? She has no doubt our blindness to the planet will boomerang. In “Tree Farm,”
. . . . The evergreen has got
its hackles up, as otherwise it couldn’t mean to—
spreads its arms across the jamb, and will and will
and will not budge. That’s how a little grudge
can hake enormous premises: one minute
you are celebrating, and the next—
your Christmas a catastrophe,
your condo just a lean-to. (“Tree Farm”)
Its theme is not large, but the simplicity and clarity of the poem “Domestique” recalls the British poet Philip Larkin. Cleaning up after her dogs, whom this MacArthur Fellow clearly adores, the poet writes,
It’s a dog’s life I myself must lead,
Day in, day out—with never a Sunday edition—
While they lie around on their couches like poets,
And study the human condition. (“Domestique”)
Larkin, too, was a virtuoso at rhyme and meter, but he never sacrificed clarity of meaning to double meanings or word play, as McHugh sometimes does.
This reviewer, also a poet, tends to read other poets looking to see how she herself would put the matter at hand. McHugh’s are not the poems I would (or could!) write––for one thing, the constant wordplay, to my ear, distances the reader too much from the material. Even so, Upgraded to Serious is supremely engaging, intelligent, and instructive for this reader, herself in the process of upgrade from critical to serious.
Zara Raab
www.zararaab.com
Zara Raab’s poems and literary journalism have appeared (or will soon) in Flash, West Branch, Arts & Letters, Nimrod, Spoon River Poetry Review, and major newspapers such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her Book of Gretel was published in spring 2010, Swimming the Eel will come out in 2011 from Robert David Books. She lives and writes in San Francisco.
McHugh’s first book, Dangers, published a decade after she entered Harvard at 17 to study with Robert Lowell, uses the virtuoso word play, double meanings, punning, the skillful use of syncopated rhythms and rhyming, the aphorisms, the satire, wit and brevity that epitomize her verse throughout her career, no matter the subject, though her subjects are usually prescient, pertinent to our lives, or both, and rarely conceited. In Dangers, she tackled the social-sexual-political issues of the 1970’s, with late Plath’s edginess (but not the confessional). In A World of Difference, her second book, she wrote,
. . . the poets,
who should have spoken for us, were busy
panning landscapes, gunning
their electrics, going
I I I I I . (“Blue Streak”)
With The Father of the Predicaments (2001) and then Eyeshot (2004), finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, McHugh took her gutsiness a step further, urged in that title poem, “The Father of the Predicaments,” to look at the world even more squarely than ever. Her new one, Upgraded to Serious, has as its subject the survival of the planet and the nature of “god” in a random, senseless, and cruel universe. McHugh remains satiric, witty, rambunctious, but––perhaps adding Jon Stewart to Robert Lowell and John Berryman as interlocutor––she is also darkly comic on the pressing issues. As always, she is pointed and epigrammatic. This world, the one God “made as only/lonely gods would do” (“Mourner’s Kaddish”) troubles the poet when “cruelty is king” (“And the Greatest of These”); when battered monkeys perform tricks at knife point; when sour scholars pontificate on life and humanity; when bad poetry, “the terrible lit//graffiti” (“Ill-Made Almighty”) afflicts us all. In this world, the poet thanks “no lucky stars for life: It wants to take a lover//limb from limb” (“And the Greatest of These”).
“My whole work is to catch the word by surprise, sneaking up on language, sneaking up on the world as it lurks in words,” McHugh has said. Upgraded to Serious includes extended word plays served in McHugh’s characteristic syncopated rhythms, double and triple entendres, true and slant rhymes, and alliterations. Take “Space Bar,” a riff on computer keyboards, monitors, the writer’s life, and spacing out:
Line up behind the space bartender
Is the meaning of it all, the vessels
marked with letters, numbers,
signs. Beyond the flats
the monitor looms. . .
. . . .
. . . . I have killed
many happy hours here,
with my bare hands, as TV
passes for IV, among
the space cadets and dingbats. (“Space Bar”)
Several poems take a futuristic twist. In “The Gift,” the poet depicts a sci-fi scenario of parallel universes, “mirror-mesmerized,” with decidedly different outcomes for each. Upgraded to Serious is, after all, McHugh’s honest, witty assessment of how the planet is faring in the first decade of the new century. “Study under Fire” strikingly imagines a tree reciprocating the love a fire is showing it, and asks, just how blind are we to nature? She has no doubt our blindness to the planet will boomerang. In “Tree Farm,”
. . . . The evergreen has got
its hackles up, as otherwise it couldn’t mean to—
spreads its arms across the jamb, and will and will
and will not budge. That’s how a little grudge
can hake enormous premises: one minute
you are celebrating, and the next—
your Christmas a catastrophe,
your condo just a lean-to. (“Tree Farm”)
Its theme is not large, but the simplicity and clarity of the poem “Domestique” recalls the British poet Philip Larkin. Cleaning up after her dogs, whom this MacArthur Fellow clearly adores, the poet writes,
It’s a dog’s life I myself must lead,
Day in, day out—with never a Sunday edition—
While they lie around on their couches like poets,
And study the human condition. (“Domestique”)
Larkin, too, was a virtuoso at rhyme and meter, but he never sacrificed clarity of meaning to double meanings or word play, as McHugh sometimes does.
This reviewer, also a poet, tends to read other poets looking to see how she herself would put the matter at hand. McHugh’s are not the poems I would (or could!) write––for one thing, the constant wordplay, to my ear, distances the reader too much from the material. Even so, Upgraded to Serious is supremely engaging, intelligent, and instructive for this reader, herself in the process of upgrade from critical to serious.
Zara Raab
www.zararaab.com
Zara Raab’s poems and literary journalism have appeared (or will soon) in Flash, West Branch, Arts & Letters, Nimrod, Spoon River Poetry Review, and major newspapers such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Her Book of Gretel was published in spring 2010, Swimming the Eel will come out in 2011 from Robert David Books. She lives and writes in San Francisco.
June 22, 2017
Wordplay + deep thought.
December 10, 2009
Poetry this clever can be a pain. But then McHugh has a heart too. The poems questioning God are my favorites. They remind me of a modern version of Cowper or is it Herbert? I would say if McHugh wanted to she could start a neo-metaphysical school of writing.
June 27, 2016
Some interesting (brilliant?), sustained wordplay throughout, but in most poems I was too preoccupied by the cleverness to take anything else away from them. None offered any frisson of emotional recognition or tempted me to read any poem a second time.
November 24, 2020
I think that this author is a very talented writer. The way they played with sound and word patterns was very intriguing.
However, I think as a reader, I'm realizing more and more that I enjoy reading poetry that is emotionally vulnerable. When poets write in a more technical, formed, or in a way that the meaning gets lost, it's hard for me to connect.
I enjoyed a few poems and found others hard to follow. My favorites were: "Recurrent Dreams" and "The Gift".
However, I think as a reader, I'm realizing more and more that I enjoy reading poetry that is emotionally vulnerable. When poets write in a more technical, formed, or in a way that the meaning gets lost, it's hard for me to connect.
I enjoyed a few poems and found others hard to follow. My favorites were: "Recurrent Dreams" and "The Gift".
February 19, 2021
I don’t know if maybe this book was too mature for my poetic interests or what, but I felt nothing. I could appreciate the lyrical quality and the word and sound play, but I didn’t feel engaged in anyway. There was no emotion here for me. I don’t think this was bad writing by any means. But it was not my thing. I also HATE the cover and the spine of the book and wish there was a separate place to rate just that.
January 27, 2020
I have decidedly mixed feelings about the collection. As a matter of personal preference I am no fan of the sort of “gibberishy,” slammed-together-thoughts pieces. But her sense of cadence, rhyme, enjambment was a delight.
November 3, 2020
She's remarkable, spark after spark off her lively anvil.
December 17, 2020
McHugh is clearly a bravura of wordplay, wit, rhyme, and form, but too often in these poems I felt her obsession with the technical aspects of the writing obfuscated the heartstuff I read poetry for.
May 13, 2026
these are very difficult poems, full of word play.
February 9, 2011
Heather McHugh knows how to twist the twine until each word is wrung turning agape (as in tongue hanging out) with an underpining of Greek "agape" -- for the love of God, used, intermittently in different ways, as outcry whether in the Thou ( dime a dozen)( Thous and... ) by the thousand, or doubted as sceptic in skip to my lou, and No attached to a placebo.
She took on "sight" with Eyeshot... and has not stopped eyeing what is serious about our critical condition. As in perhaps critical thinking, or what we do with our language or silence.
But what's... the message of our massing, ---
and suddenly you see man in many, tin in tininess, how superb has reverted to suburb, ... to the last line:
My guess is yes, since endlessness
needs us to take its pulse.
**
In her poem "Creature Crush" the cruelty builds up until I wanted to leap into the poem and tear out, and save the monkey, and then hear the money passed in the hat -- as if to help the monkey, -- what to perpetuate his torture -- or buy his replacement!
(What's the worse / perverseness of this plan, / the helplessness or the complicity?)/
Apparently I neither can / release the monkey / nor assassinate the man.
This is followed by Nocebo :
where contraries should balance out (The mind's designed, declared De Vries, to keep the ears/ from grating on each other.) oh but you, you / screw the balance up, you human animal:
of hames the only caller and dropped, making
scapegoats out of badgers, snakes and grouse --
they're answering for YOU. And where's my fabled
freedom, if I cannot liberate
the creatures of my word, the eye
of my TV, the wiring of my house? What sense
might the excruciated make, whose ravenous receptors
(over veldts of happy elephants)
flock to the one shocked mouse?
(p. 55)
**
There is careful thought in her polished pearls. Read this.
“Any design that devises the greatest possible number of readings in the fewest possible words might find itself too easily at the service of a facile moral relativity. A plurality of priorities could be said to mark the death of priority itself. But the utility of poetry is of as little interest to me as is the biography of poets, and a temperament of my ilk takes onto-numerological solace from the great mystics: all and one are crucially hard to TELL apart. (Pragmatic America makes short work of the visiting mystic: the Dalai Lama at the hot dog stand: "Make me one with everything.") How pleasurable, then, to read the word "constitutive" two ways: its prefix at once a with and an against! And how swiftly etymological authority will denounce that delight, though its own art conspire in it!”
**
and some of her poems are more like an unravelling of complex thought than a poem, such as "And The Greatest of These"
Stupidity is no grounds for our despair
it drives or drowses everywhere—
waxen, bristling, pitted, slick –
as variously textured as
notoriously tough. It ought
arouse more wonder than aversion:
cases more complex are hexed, and know it,
while the simplest merely grin into the void.
…
I can’t lose hope over the way
we tort as we retort, reveal as we redress –
I can’t regret the spank of life, its sparkling
more-or-less. Where heartlands lie the lowest
(stream and meadow, desert, swamp)
I trample on. I keep up hope
at every everyloving turn.
Each turn, that is, except
the wickedest: when cruelty
comes cackling from its
crackhouses in nature – hell
must help me then because
I lose all heart at hurt intended. Not just
humans, after all who massacre
their cousins and their dogs....
**
And as I get older, I wonder if any child still sings "Skip to my Lou" -- or sees skepto as sceptic
"And the old Grammarian
knows that something understood
is missing. "
**
She's brilliant. Loveable because you can see her vulnerability when she reads,
how it hurts to see so clearly. She gives us words and challenges us to think, without losing a bite of humor.
She took on "sight" with Eyeshot... and has not stopped eyeing what is serious about our critical condition. As in perhaps critical thinking, or what we do with our language or silence.
But what's... the message of our massing, ---
and suddenly you see man in many, tin in tininess, how superb has reverted to suburb, ... to the last line:
My guess is yes, since endlessness
needs us to take its pulse.
**
In her poem "Creature Crush" the cruelty builds up until I wanted to leap into the poem and tear out, and save the monkey, and then hear the money passed in the hat -- as if to help the monkey, -- what to perpetuate his torture -- or buy his replacement!
(What's the worse / perverseness of this plan, / the helplessness or the complicity?)/
Apparently I neither can / release the monkey / nor assassinate the man.
This is followed by Nocebo :
where contraries should balance out (The mind's designed, declared De Vries, to keep the ears/ from grating on each other.) oh but you, you / screw the balance up, you human animal:
of hames the only caller and dropped, making
scapegoats out of badgers, snakes and grouse --
they're answering for YOU. And where's my fabled
freedom, if I cannot liberate
the creatures of my word, the eye
of my TV, the wiring of my house? What sense
might the excruciated make, whose ravenous receptors
(over veldts of happy elephants)
flock to the one shocked mouse?
(p. 55)
**
There is careful thought in her polished pearls. Read this.
“Any design that devises the greatest possible number of readings in the fewest possible words might find itself too easily at the service of a facile moral relativity. A plurality of priorities could be said to mark the death of priority itself. But the utility of poetry is of as little interest to me as is the biography of poets, and a temperament of my ilk takes onto-numerological solace from the great mystics: all and one are crucially hard to TELL apart. (Pragmatic America makes short work of the visiting mystic: the Dalai Lama at the hot dog stand: "Make me one with everything.") How pleasurable, then, to read the word "constitutive" two ways: its prefix at once a with and an against! And how swiftly etymological authority will denounce that delight, though its own art conspire in it!”
**
and some of her poems are more like an unravelling of complex thought than a poem, such as "And The Greatest of These"
Stupidity is no grounds for our despair
it drives or drowses everywhere—
waxen, bristling, pitted, slick –
as variously textured as
notoriously tough. It ought
arouse more wonder than aversion:
cases more complex are hexed, and know it,
while the simplest merely grin into the void.
…
I can’t lose hope over the way
we tort as we retort, reveal as we redress –
I can’t regret the spank of life, its sparkling
more-or-less. Where heartlands lie the lowest
(stream and meadow, desert, swamp)
I trample on. I keep up hope
at every everyloving turn.
Each turn, that is, except
the wickedest: when cruelty
comes cackling from its
crackhouses in nature – hell
must help me then because
I lose all heart at hurt intended. Not just
humans, after all who massacre
their cousins and their dogs....
**
And as I get older, I wonder if any child still sings "Skip to my Lou" -- or sees skepto as sceptic
"And the old Grammarian
knows that something understood
is missing. "
**
She's brilliant. Loveable because you can see her vulnerability when she reads,
how it hurts to see so clearly. She gives us words and challenges us to think, without losing a bite of humor.
January 15, 2010
I'll have to reread this book, just as I had to reread each poem a few times before going on to the next. I always feel like I'm missing something with McHugh's later work; the poems are tight with knowledge: even the sounds are important, the pauses, the space. Toward the end of the book there's a little gem that speaks to this:
Microscope
Through petri dishes'rings
life is transmogrified. When we
look into things, we see
there's space inside.
Space, but also looking is important to McHugh; her gaze is sharp, and certain philosophies, theologies and loves feel that blade.
Reading these poems reminds me of the necessity of compression.
Microscope
Through petri dishes'rings
life is transmogrified. When we
look into things, we see
there's space inside.
Space, but also looking is important to McHugh; her gaze is sharp, and certain philosophies, theologies and loves feel that blade.
Reading these poems reminds me of the necessity of compression.
March 6, 2010
Tight and intensely clever. Sometimes too much of each. But dazzling: so many times in one poem, meanings will spin out wildly, then the whole thing will pull itself back in and land on a dime.
In the middle of a storm ("Recurrent Dream") there'll be the perfectly sane and brilliant aside: "...she learned / new nouns. Much didn't match: / the stern, for example, so inviting, / and the bow so angry."
Enjoyed:
Harrowing portrait of regret: "Not to be Dwelled On"
Teasing modernity: "Webcam the World" and "Hackers Can Sidejack Cookies"
These read like Emily Dickinson crossed with rap.
In the middle of a storm ("Recurrent Dream") there'll be the perfectly sane and brilliant aside: "...she learned / new nouns. Much didn't match: / the stern, for example, so inviting, / and the bow so angry."
Enjoyed:
Harrowing portrait of regret: "Not to be Dwelled On"
Teasing modernity: "Webcam the World" and "Hackers Can Sidejack Cookies"
These read like Emily Dickinson crossed with rap.
April 6, 2013
Sometimes I'll hear a foodie talk about their love of flavors on the palate -- that's how I felt reading this book. McHugh plays around with language. Her selection of words has incredible texture, the cleverness makes every line like a playful game, and the dizziness you're left with from the linguistic acrobats is only validated by their subject matter (in this book it happens to be the topic of loss, in various forms).
I can't wait to read her other books. These poems certainly won't be to everyone's liking but if you like wordplay, if you feel thrilled when you come across a refreshingly unexpected bit of vocabulary, then give McHugh a try, you'll be glad you did.
I can't wait to read her other books. These poems certainly won't be to everyone's liking but if you like wordplay, if you feel thrilled when you come across a refreshingly unexpected bit of vocabulary, then give McHugh a try, you'll be glad you did.
February 18, 2015
The more poetry I read, the more confused I am.
McHugh's macabre or irreverent subject matter combined with her humor and extensive use of technical jargon is fascinating and bewildering.
Some of her poems I look at and blink and just flat out don't get.
Some of them I can nod and say "ok, I follow this. cool."
She's skilled, but crazy.
Most artists are, I guess.
McHugh's macabre or irreverent subject matter combined with her humor and extensive use of technical jargon is fascinating and bewildering.
Some of her poems I look at and blink and just flat out don't get.
Some of them I can nod and say "ok, I follow this. cool."
She's skilled, but crazy.
Most artists are, I guess.
December 14, 2009
Heather McHugh's command of the English language is staggering, but her poems sometimes become tangled in meaning for the pure joy of sounds and word construction. Read them for the play they create as much as for the concept they envision, and you will be enriched.
November 13, 2009
I'm liking it.
January 13, 2010
Her lyricism is sometimes overwhelming but this book is a gem!
February 27, 2010
Heather McHugh uses language like no other poet. Her writing is so original that when I read these it was like reading another language, but a language that was still English.
December 18, 2010
I'm drawn to the wittiness of the puns in the poems, but hooked by the intricate act of punning with sound.
January 26, 2012
Wry banter on death and loss with very smart wordplay.
August 3, 2012
I bought this without realizing it was by the author of The Father of the Predicaments, which is a good thing, because I remember not liking that book much... but I like this one, quite a bit!
September 14, 2015
What a unique voice. Love the title and her sense of punnage.
February 16, 2016
really smart, beautiful poetry it just didn't make me feel anything? idk, it's poetry, I want to feel something
July 10, 2011
Weird tangled poems with great wordplay, but the gist of things sometimes gets lost.
Read
April 18, 2013Twisty
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews