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"Funny
leaves no doubt that humor has finally reclaimed its legitimate place in American poetry. Playing off a catalogue of jokes
which we all recognize, as well as serious theories about the comic, Jennifer Michael Hecht has produced
a collection like no other. Her poems are delights, transparently readable yet carefully crafted, precisely poised.”
—
Billy Collins
"Hecht’s rhymes are irregular, gymnastic, pointed, and fun; she’s found what so many would-be
populists seek, an idiom entirely conversational yet able to sustain unexpected ideas... Hecht’s poems do not only amuse;
they also disturb, or discover, or warn. Funny
[is] a smart book, a serious and sympathetic book, and a book literate people who don’t read much new poetry (as well as those
who do) can enjoy."
— Stephen Burt in the March, 2006 issue of
The Believer
"What a book. Ms. Hecht takes humor as her focus and she focuses tightly. ... Her
investigation...is bright and informed ... This book works as an intelligent exploration of "funny" and is quite often very
funny in the process. ... [R]ich in originality and verve."
— from the web site of Open
Books: A Poem Emporium in Seattle, WA
"[W]hen a book comes along that manages to balance the essentials—call
them comic and tragic, or prosaic and lyric, or coffee and wine—this reader can't help but receive it with immense gratitude,
like a breath of fresh air in a room full of farts."— Aaron Welborn in issue 6.2 of Diagram
The
Best American Poetry 2005 edited by David Lehman and guest edited by Paul Muldoon, features Jennifer Michael
Hecht's poem The Propagation of the Species, from Funny.
The
poem Gorilla in a Darkening Room, from Funny,
first published on the No-Tell Motel poetry web site, was nominated for a 2004 Pushcart
Prize.
From Funny:
Blind
Love
Lady says, Doc, I think I need glasses.
Teller says, You sure do, Lady, this is a bank.
Lady
wanders out, it's winter, wonders whether
other things have got mistaken, too.
At home she ambles through the house
with
the sudden feeling that it all has been
rewritten. Notices a shadow as ivy peels from brick,
clatter of silverware
drawer, a quarter
on her bathroom floor. As on a vase the piper
plays not to the ear but to the more endeared
inner
listener, so, quiet in an April afternoon,
late sun erupts a riot into her room.
Coin and cutlery grow red; wood
glows golden in the hall.
Outside, ivy tendrils find new purchase on the wall.
Funny,
winner of the 2005 Felix Pollak Prize, is available NOW
from University of Wisconsin Press through
amazon.com and booksellers everywhere.
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