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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9780879055851
ISBN: 0879055855
Label: Gibbs Smith
Manufacturer: Gibbs Smith
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 53
Publication Date: 1993-09
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Studio: Gibbs Smith

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Read This Cliched Review
Review: Catherine Bowman's 1-800-HOT-RIBS is a collection of poetry pulled from slow-cooked memories with undeniable skill. It's full of desert, sun, Texas, politics, love, pigs, Mexico, and food.

Bowman's poetry reads like a collection of dreams-the kind that start off based in reality but which suddenly jump up a notch and a twist on the metaphysical scale. Her poem "The Bed" forms out of her childhood memory of the "standard, posture-correct, king-size beds/preferred by newly married couples in the `60s along with avocado light light/ fixtures, Tiki-Torches, and furniture store paintings of Picassoesque fish". In first reading her poetry, one sees only slap-dash dreams cobbled together, but when the turn of her best poems comes, she veers off and makes her memories glow with a deeper, hidden meaning, which runs through the words and up through the fingers, hands, arms, shoulders holding the book and into the head, where it comes to rest like a warm spark behind the eyes.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Wonderful
Review: Catherine Bowman has always been one of my favorite female poets. I can't believe this book is out of print. I'm lucky I bought one a while ago. If you can find a copy, buy it. She's one of the best around, and this book proves it.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Best of American Poetry
Review: It is saddening to see that this book is out of print. 1-800-Hot-Ribs is simply one of the best debuts of an American poet in decades.

Bowman can work a sestina with breath-taking ease and mastery. This is particularly remarkable, considering that few poets bother with such structure these days. "The Bed" is not only the best lesson on how to write a sestina, it is one of the best American poems of the 90's.

When she is not writing sestinas, Bowman offers us glimpses of her southern heritage that are real enough to taste and smell right from the page. Poems such as "Hurricne Season" and "King Arthur" are as good as American poetry gets.

Nonetheless, this book won't be found on the shelves at Barnes and Nobles. That is because she does not use words with 13 syllables, she does not advertise her sexuality or write in riddles that can only be torn open by Helen Vendler and Harold Bloom. 1-800-Hot-Ribs is not an academic exercise. It is poetry. And poetry doesn't seem to win many pulitzers these days. I'll take Catherine Bowman over the newest Nobel Laureate any day. 1-800-Hot-Ribs belongs in the class of Phil Levine, lawrence Ferlinghetti or John Ashberry. That is to say, it belongs in every Home across the country.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Best of American Poetry
Review: It is saddening to see that this book is out of print. 1-800-Hot-Ribs is simply one of the best debuts of an American poet in decades.

Bowman can work a sestina with breath-taking ease and mastery. This is particularly remarkable, considering that few poets bother with such structure these days. "The Bed" is not only the best lesson on how to write a sestina, it is one of the best American poems of the 90's.

When she is not writing sestinas, Bowman offers us glimpses of her southern heritage that are real enough to taste and smell right from the page. Poems such as "Hurricne Season" and "King Arthur" are as good as American poetry gets.

Nonetheless, this book won't be found on the shelves at Barnes and Nobles. That is because she does not use words with 13 syllables, she does not advertise her sexuality or write in riddles that can only be torn open by Helen Vendler and Harold Bloom. 1-800-Hot-Ribs is not an academic excercise. It is poetry. And poetry doesn't seem to win many pulitzers these days. I'll take Catherine Bowman over the newest Nobel Laureate any day. 1-800-Hot-Ribs belongs in the class of Phil Levine, lawrence Ferlinghetti or John Ashberry. That is to say, it belongs in every Home across the country.

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