Though I do not of course see much of the book the way you do, you made me understand and credit your reading as plausible and useful, even in some ways rejuvenating my own sense of the work. And though, as you can probably imagine, it’s difficult for me to agree that “Fons Belli” is too slight for the volume (I have at times considered it the metaphorical heart of the book), it was especially heartening to me that the bottom-motif was not priggishly dismissed as potty-mouthedry or fetish but considered seriously in the light of its referents — as maybe a preposterous isthmus leading to a seldom visited region of purposeful metaphor, a region where cultural and aesthetic politics matter. And, too, the idea that the comic may be at once oppositional in its uses and concordant in its pleasures is something you touch upon nicely here.

Just one thing you may want to fix: the line from “One Petition” reads “nutrices ex machina,” not “nutrias,” a nutrix being a nurse. But, hey, what’s one typographical stump in your review’s otherwise excellent orchard…

Thanks for reading the book with care, and I appreciate too the favorable comments as well (though it’s more in my nature not to credit those!).

Warm regards,

Gabe Giddy, i mean Gudding

I need to tell you that I love your guts! This is a wonderful review, even though at times it’s a tad stilted from what feels like your eavesdropping on your own erudition,,,

What’s good about it, in my opinion, is your ability to appreciate a poet as nutty, as irreverent, and as iconoclastic as Gudding.

Too bad Hank Bukowski is dead,,, You’d have been a wonderfully sympathetic critic to him! Or, Albert Huffstatter,,, I hope you continue exposing–decently or indecently–those brazen-faced poets out there “shunned for deeds done.”

Cheers,
Tad