Tulip Farms and Leper Colonies: Poems

by Webb, Charles Harper

• ISBN13: 9781929918157
• ISBN10: 1929918151
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-01
• Publisher: Consortium Book Sales & Dist

Summary

In Tulip Farms and Leper Colonies, Charles Harper Webb's poetry goes anywhere, memorably presenting the human animal in all its wondrous foolishness and beauty. No issue of contemporary life, be it mundane pop culture or metaphysical high art, (not even poesy) escapes his rapiers. Charles Harper Webb was a rock guitarist for fifteen years and is now a licensed psychotherapist and professor at California State University. He has written five books of poetry, including Liver, which won the 1999 Felix Pollak Prize, and Reading the Water, which won the S.F. Morse Poetry Prize and Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He lives in Long Beach, California.

Table of Contents

To Make My Countrymen Love Poetry	p. 3
Funktionslust	p. 9
A Girl's Best Friend	p. 11
To Prove that We Existed Before You Were Born	p. 13
Times Stringer Meets the Credit Repairman	p. 15
Potato Bug	p. 17
Beggars	p. 19
Reading The Canterbury Tales, I Mourn Lost Words	p. 21
Language as Self-Defense	p. 23
Flu	p. 25
Helpless	p. 26
Reading About Rwanda	p. 29
Feeling Sorry for Myself	p. 31
Yiddish for Goys	p. 33
So Help Me God	p. 36
Charles Harper Webb	p. 41
Vikings	p. 43
A Salesman and a Librarian	p. 45
I Love Fly-Fishing So Much	p. 46
Hard-Boiled Eggs	p. 48
Birdcage	p. 50
The New Marriage	p. 52
Against Sentimentality	p. 53
Naming Our Boy	p. 55
1957	p. 57
Death Comes to the Baby Boom	p. 58
Second Honeymoon	p. 60
Congratulations, Charles H. Webb, You've Just Won Ten Million Dollars	p. 65
Waking at 3 AM	p. 70
The Lost One	p. 72
Unhappy Endings	p. 74
Magritte's Le Viol: The Rape	p. 76
Cocksucker	p. 78
Why Laurel Stopped Performing After Hardy Died	p. 80
Waiting	p. 82
Turtle	p. 83
The Reason for My Mistake	p. 84
Socks	p. 86
Hanging Blinds	p. 88
Closing Ceremonies	p. 90
"Did that Really Happen?"	p. 93
Approaching 50	p. 95
About the Author	p. 99
Acknowledgments	p. 100
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