Product Description
Stephen Dobyns is one of America's most respected poets; his manner is tart and often sardonic, his language tough, funny, yet at heart profoundly humane. In his eleventh book of poetry he pushes the boundaries of conventional collections, presenting an intriguing two-part volume. The first section contains ruminative prose poems, dealing with a man who is looking back over the successes and failures of his life, that are intercut with short "considerations" in the manner of the Maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The second section presents an alphabetical selection of words defined by Dobyns in evocative one-line phrases. Punctuating the text throughout are woodcuts and line drawings by the artist Howie Michels. A compelling exploration of attitudes, words, and concepts, this is an important addition to Doybns's body of work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

One Liners
Comedy had henny Youngman flipping out one liners, poetry has Stephen Dobyns. The one liners are pithyto the extreme but make you think---"Humane:Thinks Twice" or "He loved in order to be increased, not in order to love." They are perhaps bits and pieces of ideas he had for longer poems. But whatever they are, or from whatever source they sprung, thet are welcome from one of our great(but too often overlooked) artists.

Incredible insights in few words...
I am surprised by those reviews stating disappointment in this unique collection.As a lifelong fan of Dobyns' work, I believe that this combination of prose-poem and short, often sentence-long insights is one of his most potent efforts to date.So many of them capture large truths in brief outcroppings of words that I am left with a sense of the tremendous potential of language to connect us.
The illustrations by Howie Michels are clearly created with an understanding of Dobyns' work.They render the author's verbal imagination into the pictorial realm without overstatement.As with Velocities, Cemetary Nights, and The Balthus Poems, this book is already becoming heavily dogeared, and appears destined to be one I read many times.A strong performance from my literary hero.

"Deep Thoughts" from Dobyns
If you are a fan of the Dobyns we all know and love in collections like "Velocities," this book will be a terrible disappointment.What was Dobyns thinking?

A collection of goofy aphorisms with even goofier "illustrations."How the mighty have fallen. . . .

Hope he gets back into his old groove soon.

Sweepings from the fortune-cookie factory floor.
Dobyns is one of my favorite poets but this "collection" is a big disappointment. Read his "Velocities" instead.

"Porcupine Kisses" is composed of three forms of writing plus the illustrations by Michels. None of these four elements is either entertaining enough or meaningful enough to justify buying or reading the book.

Dobyns' extensive poetic work to date suggests a skeptical view ofthe world and its mores - but having bought this book I feel like I'm the one he's snickering at. It is a physically unsatisfying volume as much as it is an overpriced one. I'm not sure what's up with his publisher situation, but Dobyns' recent (poetic) works have all been slender paperback-only editions printed on a sort of cheesy-cheap newsprint and priced like parchment. In this book the woodcut-style illustrations seem to have been added either to create the illusion of "high art" (ahh... the slender chapbook on linen paper, hand-colored by the artist) or in an attempt to pull together the three disparate textual elements (umm... adding enough stuff to this pot will allow us to call it bouillabaisse). From a poet whom I have always counted on to cork the phony burble of sentimentality, either rationale for the illustrations is cloyingly discordant.

The first half of the book alternates brief, half-page prose pieces withhalf-page clumps of aphorisms. The prose is interesting enough, I suppose, but it really is just prose. It contrasts sharply with the wide range of poetic forms Dobyns has employed over the years. Many of these have veered close to the prose-poem form, but never have they lost the element of finely-chiseled facet that form imposes on mere prose. The aphorisms, to put it bluntly, hardly rise above the level of fortune cookie pithiness.

The last half of the book is comprised of what another reviewer has generously termed "daffynitions" - odd little definitions of words that are supposed, I guess, to cast a refracted light on their meanings. I found few of them either humorous or meaningful and certainly wasn't willing to plough through pages and pages of an alphabetized listing to uncover the odd gem. I wonder if Dobyns fancies himself the John Ciardi of the new millennium.

In my opinion, Dobyns is a master of language and modern poetic form who has always mixed a wry but clear-eyed incisiveness with somewhat more languorous poetic story-telling. (He must be a good, native story-teller if one can judge from his immense body of fictional work.) But his poetry has also always carried a certain worldly-weariness that seems to have settled too heavily on the shoulders of the writer of this book, and squeezed out these two parts in these equally unsatisfying ways: the one meanderingly prosaic and the other evaporated to dry dust.

The essence of my favorite poem by Dobyns,"Querencia" (collected in his "Velocities" from an earlier book), might well be distilled down to one or two lines when I try to describe it to friends; but in doing so, I know I will fail before I start. In this book Dobyns seems to have exhaustedly decided that all the in-betweens can be skipped and merely the fragmented end result delivered. I can't say I agree. In "Querencia" the bull inevitably, exhaustedly drags itself back to its seemingly arbitrary safe spot - perhaps blankly aware that the safety is only illusory. I sure hope Mr. Dobyns will find a way to drag himself back to poetry.

Poetry Plus
THE PORCUPINE'S KISSES is not just a book ofpoetry, but a work oftextual art.The pages are busy. Part One-- "Prose Poems and Considerations" is divided into right page, left page sections;Part Two-- "Definitions" is alphabetical.Throughout the text are illustrations, line drawings and wood cuts by Howie Michels.It is unorthodox-- a well thought out, creative collaboration by two men.

In fact, that is its most obvious feature: its masculinity. Dobyns' humor is dark, indelible.His point of view is sharp and detached. There is something clearly MAN about this book-- not at all to disparage the value of the work.It is compassionate, shy, sometimes grotesque. It can be out-loud laughably funny, and it comes from a completely isolated place, a thoughtful autumn of a man's life.

The nature of its layout can force readers to move through this book in an unconventional way.The two sections, the illustrations, and then alphabetical listings suggest alternative ways to read and look.

It is possible to maneuver through considerations: "Pimple boasts of being a boil." "That he was weak became his strongest defense."Or look up odd Definitions as if in a dictionary."Impotent:nubbins redux.""Uglier:the children of your friends."

It is also possible to travel through the book, motivated by the illustrations-- keen renderings of Dobyns's writing and his quirky personality.

The playful intellect at the center of his prose poems is most attractive. Dobyns' poems are somber but humorous, have a sense of exile, a wistful for once was that is deeply moving and beautifully human. ... Read more

Product Description
Street-wise P.I. Charlie Bradshaw returns in a new Saratoga racetrack mystery. A man Charlie helped convict 20 years ago has been paroled from prison and is sending Charlie vicious death threats. To add to his problems, his long-time, one-in-a-million woman Janey Burris wants a commitment. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Life without interference
Charlie Bradshaw, a PI, likes a life without interference.His friend Victor does not.Charlie's desire for freedom arises from his twenty years on the police force.A divorced man, Charlie has a friend, Janey Burris.Charlie goes to the police stations to look up the files on an old case of his because a body has been found on the construction site for a new library.

The case had been closed as a missing persons case in the first instance.Reading his old notes, Charlie discerns that he had used a moral grid in working the case.He is tormented by something he calls the ambiguity of experience.Revisiting the old scenes, he is told by someone that shy people have a lot of anger.Investigating the case makes Charlie aware of his younger self.He questions his previous judgments and perceptions.

This book is thoughtful verging on the philosophical.It doesn't have that typical American brassiness.It resembles the novels and stories of Agatha Christie.

Hit and Miss (mild spoilers)
This one was a head-scratcher for me.I like Dobyns's writing a lot: The Church of Dead Girls was an amazing read, Boy in the Water a little less so, but still competently done.Dobyns has a special talent with atmosphere; he can paint a scene or the attitude of a character with just a few simple sentences, and the few shining moments of Saratoga Haunting are when Dobyns treats us to descriptions of aging hotels, the flavor of old town main streets, and forest lakes.

But 'Haunting had me stymied.It feels like it was written over a long weekend.The action and the internal monologues seem to repeat themselves, with only slight variations, sometimes three or four times.I understand the value of this kind of repetition, especially for the kinds of suspenseful build-ups that Dobyns is so good at.But some of these iterations seemed to lack any meaning.Charlie's self-recriminations over a dismal younger self got old after the third time; I wanted to say "we got it...move on, Charlie!"The dialog was also stilted at times and the minor ending (i.e., the caves and reward money) seemed to come out of the blue.The sub-plots coud be distracting at times.

A decent effort, but I plan to read the entire Saratoga series and hope to find Charlie in more cohesive shape than in this one.If you liked Haunting, however, by all means pick up The Church of Dead Girls...a better book by far.

Where is Stephen Dobyns?
This book is hilarious and wonderful!Why, oh why won't Dobyns be more prolific with this series?

A little known treasure.
Dobyns is amazing.Here he continues a mystery series with a fine novel that is better by far than some "literary" novels getting raves in THE NEW YORK TIMES.I don't understand why he is not better known. ... Read more

Product Description
The ninth mystery set at the famed Saratoga Raceway presents a colorful tale of murder and horseflesh that's sure to satisfy mystery fans and racing enthusiasts alike. When P.I. Charlie Bradshaw's politically incorrect pal Victor Plotz becomes a murder suspect, he and Charlie find themselves caught up in the high drama of the horse auctions as they try to solve the case. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

One of Dobyn's Best
Fleshpot is one of Dobyn's best books!It is narrated by Victor Plotz (call me Vic) - who is much funnier than Charlie Bradshaw (Dobyn's main character in the Saratoga books).Vic is a funny, wise-cracking kinda guy and his adventures kept me amused and interested.If you haven't read Dobyn yet - read Fleshpot - and if you are a Dobyn fan, you've probably already read it - and enjoyed it.

Very improbable, Totally fun!
Murder writers seem to need to have multiple murders and danger for main characters at end. This is no exception, but the main characters are so irreverent and so much fun that one can laugh atthe genre while enjoying twists and turns. Setting in Saratoga works; this book is much better than "Saratoga Haunting" by same author. ... Read more

Product Description
Word count: 2667. ... Read more

Product Description
Charlie Bradshaw is a regular, down-to-earth guy -- middle-aged, divorced, an ex-cop working as a security guard at a Saratoga stable. Then his boss gets killed. It shows Charlie what's behind those powerful and prestigious stable owners.

But Charlie doesn't back off. Aided by a motley band of guards and grooms, racetrack touts and toughs, Charlie discovers a far-reaching plot behind the murder -- a discovery that just might cost him his life!

"Dick Francis had better look to his laurels. An American long shot, appropriately named Dobyns, is coming up fast on the outside." (The Houston Post) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Pretty good
I picked this up because I loved Church of the Dead Girls. The story is of an ex-cop in Saratoga, New York investigating the shooting death of his boss. The bumbling local police chief doesn't like him invading on his turf. Nothing really new here. The most interesting aspect is that Dobyns sprinkles in anecdotes about old-time gamblers. ... Read more

Product Description
Thomas Lux has called Stephen Dobyns "one of the very finest poets writing in America today. His poems are brave, ravenous, intensely moving, and utterly his own." The poems in his new volume, Mystery, So Long, use both free verse and traditional forms to examine life’s complications and peculiar joys, in language that varies from the staid to the hysteric and in situations ranging from the commonplace to the mythic. Humor, surprise, the absurd, and the ferocious are used as so many picks and shovels to further Dobyns’s dark explorations in this powerful collection.

From "Mystery, So Long"

At first, it filled the space around us with holes,
the mystery. It was scary. People fell through them.
There goes Og, people might say. They sang hymns
to the mystery. They pounded on drums. They fed
the mystery both friends and strangers. It seemed
a good idea. The mystery hungered for human flesh.
Oh, implacable and mysterious mystery.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Mystery So Long...How would you describeit?
Simply put, Stephen Dobyns is sassy, irreverant, honest, and appears to have had as much fun writing this collection of poems as I have had reading them. After hearing the poet at a reading last week, and enjoying this collection, I have already ordered "Velocities." It is impossible not to smile or even guffaw while reading Stephen Dobyns.

A Brutal Truth
I will not quote a selection of lines from Dobyns' work as I feel the title alone encapsulates the duality inherent in all of Dobyns' poetry, a duality he has sharpened to an even finer point with his present book, "Mystery, So Long".The title presents the reader with a seemingly comic quip disregarding mystery as surpassed like the exultant words of Little Caesar as he escapes from the cops-so long, suckers. But it is just this comedic stance that modulates with the empathetic and disarms the reader of any preconceived notions about the inaccessibility of poetry and in turn, the mystery of life that poetry wishes to acknowledge. So, with this offering, Dobyns invites the reader to explore the mystery not as a disjunctive enactment of emotion, a contemporary fashion that mumbles from one disjunctive moment to the next, but as, for the most part, a meditative narrative on the absurd and gritty moments, moments not acceptable as conversation at the dinner table, as they happen in the private bedrooms and bathrooms of our lives. And so, Dobyns serves us a distasteful moment from a comedic stance that he is somehow always able to digest into a brutal truth. I say brutal because these are the moments we would rather not talk about, moments of socially unacceptable events or thoughts that he is able to raise to a level that speaks to the importance of every moment to not understand the long mystery of life that we have not enough life to understand but to understand that nothing is to be overlooked if we are to understand, of life's mystery, the brilliancy of every moments' telling part. And so, Dobyns' book does not say "So Long, Mystery," but "Mystery, So Long," in affirmation of his continued effort to reach a more brutal truth, a fuller life.

A Must-Have Book for All Poetry Lovers
Whether you're new to poetry or a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, YOU WILLL NOT REGRET BUYING THIS BOOK! In fact, after finishing it for the first time, I immediately ordered copies for my closest poetry and non-poetry friends. And uniformly they report enjoying it, poem after sparkling poem.

Moreover, if the world is just (though who's naïve enough to believe it is?), then Mystery, So Long will win at least the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, or the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. I claim this because this book is a seamless masterpiece of the noblest intent, achieving that oft-sought-but-rarely-found fusion of high ambition with artistic accomplishment. And, most amazingly, it does so from the book's preface (Jaime Sabines: "¡Bien te vaya, ladrón, con lo que robas a tu dolor y a tus amores!") to its epistemologically lucid final note:

Was this the wisdom come to him at last?
That nothing could rid him of his isolation
His toys no longer hid what was there: himself
And the night and the only entry into the night.

In other words, line by line, across these seventy astonishing poems, Dobyns sweats and strains to gift his readers with essential meaning (i.e. "Should I regret my death if it is inevitable? / Should I regret my life if it is always passing? / How to be both arrow and bow.") And like an ascetic, he has stripped bare each poem in the collection, thereby cleansing it of any traces of self-aggrandizement or ornamentation. In this way, he generously offers to us the struggle to live with clear vision (i.e. "So often in this world what is rejected / crawls back to the heart, what is cast off / again crowds the brain"), even though some of us might prefer the cozy lair of our delusions....

To achieve his aims, Dobyns writes with bold language, rich metaphors, good pace, trenchant wit, and a tender heart. Underpinning these is always his fierce intelligence, and the result is a poetry that is endlessly re-readable. For, technical excellence aside, the poems exemplify the highest service of poetry: the dogged, selfless pursuit of our deepest questions about the human condition. In this sense, I don't feel hyperbolic in locating this book's ambition alongside Milton's Paradise Lost or Dante's Inferno; Dobyns, too, in his humble but powerful way is thrashing about in language to claw and scratch for moral meaning. More specifically, Mystery, So Long asks questions such as, What is belief?, What is art?, What is grief?, Why does forgetfulness exist? What are the origins of our myths?, and, What's the purpose of mystery?

In summary, throughout the book, the poems are masterfully written and arranged, moving as rewardingly through a personal maturation as they do through received forms such as the sonnet and villanelle. So if you're looking for a book loaded with humor, insight, force, and humanity, then you've found the perfect purchase for your next opportunity to read.

Another Meditative Mood
Usually, Stephen Dobyns is at his best when writing in a meditative mood.One thinks immediately of the character of Heart from PALLBEARER''S ENVYING THE ONE WHO RIDES, of the narrative interpretations of the paintings of Balthus from THE BALTHUS POEMS, or most recently, of the prose constructions of THE PORCUPINE'S KISSES.MYSTERY, SO LONG, Dobyns' twelve volume, is not (at least explicitly anyway), that kind of book.Which is not to say, however, that it's not without its own meditations.Most notably, MYSTERY'S energy and success stem from the constant interplay between formal and free verse, between Biblical and other ancient mythologies.Some of Dobyns best poems can be found in these pages, too: "The Exegencies of Art," "Functional Forgetting," "The Mercy of Lazarus."Notice how Dobyns controls the penultimate six lines of "Poem Ending with a Line by Su Tung-Po," a sonnet:

Ahead waits a dark night with a single star.
Behind extends the long view down the mountain.
Should I regret my death if it is inevitable?
Should I regret my lift if it is always passing?
How to be both arrow and bow.Released, the arrow
flies past the dead oak at the end of the path.
'One must make certain the mind never clings.'

Those lines, like many in this volume, read as if scripted in stone.All told, this is an outstanding effort from one of America's finest poets.And, like many good books, its grandeur begins with its title.There'a playfullness at work:Is it that the mysteries of human experience are inexplicable, and meant to endure?Or, is the book instead an act of resignation, a giving in to such mysteries?Is it both?Here's where we find Dobyns once again in a meditative mood:Read it to find out. ... Read more

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ACCLAIMED POET STEPHEN DOBYNS OFFERS A BOOK OF STARTLING ORIGINALITY AND DISTURBING VISION ... Read more

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Contains Pulitzer Prize-winner Eugenides' first published story. ... Read more