{"id":347,"date":"2008-04-24T11:22:36","date_gmt":"2008-04-24T18:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/04\/bullies-addicts-and-losers-a-poet-loves-them-all\/"},"modified":"2008-04-24T11:26:22","modified_gmt":"2008-04-24T18:26:22","slug":"bullies-addicts-and-losers-a-poet-loves-them-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/24\/bullies-addicts-and-losers-a-poet-loves-them-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullies, Addicts and Losers: A Poet Loves Them All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-style: italic\" class=\"Apple-style-span\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/24\/books\/24garn.html\" target=\"_blank\">from the New York Times<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 12px; line-height: normal\" class=\"Apple-style-span\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-transform: uppercase; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 90%; color: #000000\" class=\"kicker\"><nyt_kicker>BOOKS OF THE TIMES<\/nyt_kicker><\/p>\n<h2>Bullies, Addicts and Losers: A Poet Loves Them All<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; color: #808080; font-size: 80%\" class=\"byline\">By\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/query.nytimes.com\/search\/query?ppds=bylL&amp;v1=DWIGHT%20GARNER&amp;fdq=19960101&amp;td=sysdate&amp;sort=newest&amp;ac=DWIGHT%20GARNER&amp;inline=nyt-per\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #004276; text-decoration: none\" title=\"More Articles by Dwight Garner\">DWIGHT GARNER<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; color: #808080; font-size: 80%\" class=\"timestamp\">Published: April 24, 2008<\/p>\n<p>A couple of years ago, writing in Poetry magazine, August Kleinzahler lighted a string of firecrackers under\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/k\/garrison_keillor\/index.html?inline=nyt-per\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #004276; text-decoration: underline\" title=\"More articles about Garrison Keillor.\">Garrison Keillor<\/a>\u00a0and his \u201cWriter\u2019s Almanac\u201d segments on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/n\/national_public_radio\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #004276; text-decoration: underline\" title=\"More articles about National Public Radio\">National Public Radio<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/orr450.jpg\" align=\"right\" height=\"236\" width=\"220\" hspace=\"15\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Kleinzahler whacking Keillor by Robert Grossman\" \/>Mr. Kleinzahler criticized the \u201canecdotal, wistful\u201d poems Mr. Keillor often chooses to read \u2014 poems he summarized as \u201cmiddle-aged creative writing instructor catching whiff of mortality in the countryside.\u201d Mr. Kleinzahler wasn\u2019t very nice about Mr. Keillor\u2019s \u201ctreacly baritone\u201d either.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately Mr. Kleinzahler boiled his case against Mr. Keillor down to these three-and-a-half sentences: \u201cMultivitamins are good for you. Exercise, fresh air, and sex are good for you. Fruit and vegetables are good for you. Poetry is not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It makes a certain kind of sense, then, that Mr. Kleinzahler\u2019s career-spanning new book of poems, \u201cSleeping It Off in Rapid City,\u201d features on its cover a nighttime photograph of a White Castle hamburger franchise. Like White Castle\u2019s pint-size hamburgers, Mr. Kleinzahler\u2019s poems are of uncertain if not dubious nutritional value. And while there is nothing made-to-order about them, his poems arrive salty and hot; you\u2019ll want to devour them on your lap, with a stack of napkins to mop up the grease.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Kleinzahler is an American eccentric, a hard man to pin down. Born in New Jersey, he writes poems that have a pushy exuberance and an expert recall of that state\u2019s tougher schoolyards \u2014 of bullies with names like Stinky Phil and of \u201cfire trucks and galoshes,\/the taste of pencils and Louis Bocca\u2019s ear.\u201d And he writes with elegiac insight about life\u2019s losers, the people he calls \u201cstrange rangers,\u201d the addicted, insane or destitute.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/24\/books\/24garn.html\" target=\"_blank\">click to read full article in the NY Times<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from the New York Times BOOKS OF THE TIMES Bullies, Addicts and Losers: A Poet Loves Them All By\u00a0DWIGHT GARNER Published: April 24, 2008 A couple of years ago, writing in Poetry magazine, August Kleinzahler lighted a string of firecrackers under\u00a0Garrison Keillor\u00a0and his \u201cWriter\u2019s Almanac\u201d segments on\u00a0National Public Radio.\u00a0 Mr. Kleinzahler criticized the \u201canecdotal, wistful\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}