American Rendering: New and Selected Poems

by Andrew Hudgins

American Rendering showcases twenty-four new poems as well as a generous selection from Andrew Hudgins’s six previous volumes, spanning a distinguished career of more than twenty-five years.

Hudgins, who was born in Texas and spent most of his childhood in the South, is a lively and prolific poet who draws on his vivid Southern and,more specifically, Southern Baptist, childhood. Influenced by writers such as John Crowe Ransom,William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and James Dickey, Hudgins has developed a distinctively descriptive form of the Southern Gothic imagination. His poems are rich with religious allusions, irreverent humor, and at times are inflected with a dark and violent eroticism.Of Hudgins’s most recent collection, Ecstatic in the Poison , Mark Strand “[It] is full of intelligence, vitality, and grace. And there is a beautiful oddness about it.Dark moments seem charged with an eerie luminosity and the most humdrum events assume a startling lyric intensity. A deep resonant humor is everywhere, and everywhere amazing.”

Genres: Poetry

221 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

ANDREW HUDGINS is the author of seven books of poems, including Saints and Strangers, The Glass Hammer, and most recently Ecstatic in the Poison. A finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, he is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships as well as the Harper Lee Award. He currently teaches in the Department of English at Ohio State University.

Reviews

[Jim Beatty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eternity's a ball, history a stick.
...I envy the driven. They've ceased to agonize on what or why - just how.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating can only attest to how much I enjoy a book, on whatever level. Not that there are not some fine poems here. You should expect that, of course, from any compilation of seven previous volumes of poetry (as well as new poems). But so many poems did not speak to me. And so many are rather strange and cruel: kids beating a horse to death and laughing, teenagers laughing at a boy set afire. Any subject is ripe for poetry but sense of death did not appeal to me. Other poems seem pointless. But who am I to argue against words that have won the Poets' Prize, and been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize?

The book does contain powerful and evocative poems, the title poem is one. But not enough such poems for me to rate it higher. My favorites are Hudgins' narrative poems when he is speaking with the voice of the character, as well as his poems that reference ancient history. I've left more than a half dozen post-its within this book and almost all are within the section of his book, "From Babylon in a Jar".

What I dislike most about the book, perhaps, is the lurid sense of death. Obviously, many people, especially the critics, enjoy those poems but they did not arouse favor with me.

[Catherine Mustread · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tried to finish this book, but after seemingly months of reading a few poems at a time, have only got to the 11% mark and being a library book cannot keep it forever. Did add quite a few new words to my vocabulary list which only slowed down my efforts.

[Brice Fuqua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent anthology of poems by an underrated southern poet,

[Kirsten Kinnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is great. If you think you don't like poetry, this will prove you wrong and amaze you in the process. The title poem is stunning, and this, from one of his previous collections, is one of my favorites:

The Cestello Annunciation

The angel has already said, Be not afraid.
He’s said, The power of the Most High
will darken you. Her eyes are downcast and half closed.
And there’s a long pause -a pause here of forever-
as the angel crowds her. She backs away,
her left side pressed against the picture frame.

He kneels. He’s come in all unearthly innocence
to tell her of glory -not knowing, not remembering
how terrible it is. And Botticelli
gives her eternity to turn, look out the doorway, where
on a far hill floats a castle, and halfway across
the river toward it juts a bridge, not completed-

and neither is the touch, angel to virgin,
both her hands held up, both elegant, one raised
as if to say stop, while the other hand, the right one,
reaches toward his; and, as it does, it parts her blue robe
and reveals the concealed red of her inner garment
to the red tiles of the floor and the red folds

of the angel’s robe. But her whole body pulls away.
Only her head, already haloed, bows,
acquiescing. And though she will, she’s not yet said,
Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord,
as Botticelli, in his great pity,

lets her refuse, accept, refuse, and think again.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Yes, the girl sneezing pink froth and the woman fisting her eyes
each time another oldie crackles from the ceiling
look worse than I do. See them. And find, please, a dentist
for the man clutching two molars in a bloody paper towel.
And a CPA or lawyer - summon one for the man
squeezing the folder of gray paper to his chest and squeaking
grievously. But I have an appointment. I arrived two hours ago,
on time, a little early in fact, and someone must help me find
the Ferris wheel I hear looping in my attic and the Tilt-A-Whirl
lopsidedly unfolding and refolding in the basement.
Through the walls, I hear the oompah-pahing of a carousel,
and in dark windows and the gleaming facades of black appliances
I glimpse ascending and descending carved horses, real tigers,
elephants, and waltzing poodles. Whitewashed clowns ghost across
a TV humbling itself before beer, soap, laundry, and my armpits, muffling
the human cannonball's applause and the dumbfounded wow
when orange torches enter a human face and emerge unquenched.
The circus is not my fault or responsibility. Someone
must write that down. Someone must sell me a ticket."

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't say I really cared all that much about the 24 new poems of this collection, but I was blown away by some of Hudgins's old favorites in the collected poems section.

"Something Wakes Me Up" detailed the sounds of the skinning of a deer. The serial poem "Saints and Strangers" effectively used a narrative to describe the relationship between a fire and brimstone preacher father and his daughter. Hudgins sticks with biblical imagery in "Hunting with my Brother" (Cain and Abel) and "Praying Drunk" (The Lord's Prayer). That's what makes me such a big fan of Hudgins' work--he doesn't shy away from his religious heritage.

Other standout poems include the humorous "Grandmother's Spit," his elegy to his undead father, his ode to compost, and his realization that numbers are cruel in "Thus."

[Diann Blakely]

If you demand proof of this poet's place in our culture, look no further than past lists of nominees for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award; AMERICAN RENDERING: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS gives even more abundant proof of the critical esteem in which his work is widely held. Hudgins’ poems are often funny, hinging on a joke or wisecrack or malapropism, but human nature red in tooth and claw has always been his greatest theme, whether writing about the pain, fear and trauma that are an inevitable part of childhood, or the female victims of a serial killer (“It’s raining women here in Cincinnati”), or the three young men murdered by the Ku Klux Klan during Mississippi’s “Freedom Summer,” repeating and repeating their names, “Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner,” in the difficult litany required by the villanelle.

[Tom Romig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Versatile poet with a great sense of sound and cadence. His poems move, sure and catlike. You hear and feel first, then think.