How to Be Perfect

by Padgett, Ron

• ISBN13: 9781566892032
• ISBN10: 1566892031
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-01
• Publisher: Coffee House Pr

Summary

Poetry. Ron Padgett has a gift for making poetry that is simultaneously funny and artful. He lays down lines that start as giggles, grow to hearty chuckles, and then give way to wispy thoughts of strange significance. "HOW TO BE PERFECT should remind us of how long Ron Padgett has managed to stay perfectly balanced on a tightrope of irony despite his verbal giddiness and the uproariousness of his imagination. I wish he would loan me his sunglasses for a day or two so I could check out the amazing world according to Padgett" -- Billy Collins.

Table of Contents

Mortal combat	p. 1
Rinso	p. 2
Tops	p. 3
The Swiss family Robinson	p. 4
Blizzard cube	p. 5
Rialto	p. 6
Everybody and his uncle	p. 7
Toothbrush	p. 13
There was a man of Thessaly	p. 14
History lesson	p. 15
The question bus	p. 16
The nail	p. 17
Mir	p. 18
Why I would like to have been a twelfth-century Christian	p. 19
For Morris Golde	p. 20
Now at the Sahara	p. 21
How to be perfect	p. 22
Sea chantey	p. 31
Downstairs	p. 32
Nails	p. 33
It is almost unbearable	p. 34
Country room	p. 35
Jeopardy	p. 37
Sitting down somewhere else	p. 38
The art of the sonnet	p. 39
The alpinist	p. 40
Gothic red	p. 42
Charlie Chan wins again	p. 43
Thinking about the moon	p. 44
This for that	p. 45
Nelly	p. 46
Very post-impressionism	p. 47
The absolutely huge and incredible injustice in the world	p. 48
Afternoon	p. 59
All in white	p. 60
Dead or alive in Belgium	p. 61
Whiz and bang	p. 63
Standoff with frosty	p. 64
A train for Kenneth	p. 65
In memoriam K.	p. 66
The Goldberg variations	p. 67
Mad scientist	p. 68
Hound dog	p. 69
Fantasy block	p. 70
Words from the front	p. 71
Pikakirjoitusvihko	p. 72
To the Russian poets	p. 83
Construction	p. 84
Why God did what he did	p. 85
The idea of being hurled at Key West	p. 86
Judy holliday	p. 87
Method	p. 88
Bed	p. 95
The breakfast nook	p. 96
The stapler	p. 97
Different kinds of ink	p. 98
Sketch	p. 99
Aubade	p. 100
Do you like it?	p. 101
Drive	p. 102
Slight foxing	p. 103
Blink	p. 106
Bird's eye	p. 107
Now you see it	p. 108
Hercules	p. 109
Bible study	p. 110
Elegy for no one	p. 112
C note	p. 113
Bastille day	p. 114
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.