The Mad Hatter Reviews BAP 2008 [with Lauren MacArthur]

Q: There are only two hats mentioned within all seventy-five 2008 selections. What are they?
A: Ciaran Berry, Electrocuting an Elephant  (“…like extras from one of the first westerns with their hats and moustaches, their say-nothing expressions…”) and Mary Karr, Recuperation from the Dead Love through Christ and Isaac Babel (“He wore a white Y on his baseball cap. Night was a waterfall down this face.”)

Q: 17% of Wright’s selections hail from which publication?
A: The New Yorker

Q: 4 of the poets have the same last name.  What is it?
A: Young

Q: Of those 4 poets with the same last name, 3 have first names beginning with which letter (all monosyllabic)?
A: “D.”

Q: Which three poems have hard objects in their titles?
A: “Museum of Stones”; “Rock Polisher”; “Skull Trees, South Sudan”

Q: Which three poems specifically name a gender?
A: “Handy Men{“; “Men”; “Evening Man”

Q: In his prologue, Charles Wright quotes an author: “Fail. Fail More. Fail Better.” Name the author.
A: Samuel Beckett

Q: Which poet does he quote saying that poetry “is a matter of ‘soul making’.”
A: Keats

Q: Fill in the blank.  Wright wrote:
“There are very few bad poems being published.   Very few.”    On the other hand, there are very few really good ones, either, ones that might make you want to stick your fingers in the ____________ saying, Take me now, Lord, take me now.   The way I felt about Lowell and Roethke and Berryman back in my green time…
A: Cuisinart

Q: Wright said that there are three halves to poetry, What are they?
A: Language, Technique, Emotion

-- Lauren MacArthur