Antler: The Selected Poems

By Antler

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1887128409
• ISBN13: 9781887128407
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Soft Skull Pr
• Length: 140 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Taking Poetry to a Higher Level

Reading Antler's poetry is to connect again to the larger poets who looked deep inside their lives, their hearts, their culture, and report back what we could have said ourselves--but find the words to say in these pages. Plato said knowledge is remembering what we have forgotten; a progressive romantic will find that knowledge here. Antler's work takes its lineage from Allen Ginsburg, William Carlos Williams, Walt Whitman, Blake & Wordsworth, and Antler's own strivings and wilderness trips. Excellent book.

A true son of Whitman

"Antler: The Selected Poems" is a hearty helping of the work of this remarkable poet. The book contains an introduction by Jeff Poniewaz, who discusses Antler's literary career and his relationship with another great poet, Allen Ginsberg.Antler's work is humane, shamanic, erotic (both homo- and hetero-), earthy, satiric, horrific, mystical, and playful. It's also often quite funny--I chuckled in delight a number of times while reading the book. Antler invokes a number of poets in his own work: Neruda, Lorca, Plath, Keats, etc. But the name most often raised is that of Walt Whitman. In the acknowledgements section of the book Antler claims Whitman as his "spiritual father," and indeed in these poems I see Antler carrying forward a poetic/prophetic torch he inherited from Whitman.Antler writes in a direct, clear, muscular style that is ripe with the smells of life. He sometimes plays with words in a way which reminds me of E.E. Cummings. He is, to use his own words, "the scholar of winks and the archeologist of guffaws"--a composer of "visionary sexpoems/ and marijuana hymns." Like Whitman, his vision embraces "every Livingkind." In a number of poems he explores and defends poetry itself, and ponders the role of the poet in our world.Antler is a poet of the natural world--a defender of the earth, and he also writes with compassion for the downtrodden workers in the world of human industry. He finds revelations in plants, animals, terrain, and in his fellow human beings. Antler's is a remarkable voice--full of love, outrage, and sexual energy, and this book is rich, powerful, and rewarding poetic testament.

Brilliant Collection...should have been published sooner.

Antler's work is singular and amazing. Whitmanesque? Sure. Ginsbergian? Yeah. Antlerian? You betcha! We need that term created for Antler's work. If you love poetry and have never heard of Antler, blame the horrible state of contemporary poetry, publishing and lit programs. Antler's work is mindblowingly beautiful and inspired by a love of man, earth, creation and more sources for loveliness than you have ever considered possible. Reading Antler's work is a revelation of never before considered levels of beauty. This world and life is worthy of praise and love and ecstasy, and Antler's work reminds us all...and *this* is why he's mentioned in the same breath with Whitman. But don't take my word for it. Read the controversy of poetry blissed out on love of all that is has been and will be. Read and revel in the power of his wonderful funny, erotic, blessed verse.

Vitality, humor, empathy

Antler is a great poet, one more people ought to know about. He is the closest thing to Whitman--our greatest poet--I have ever come across in vitality, humor, empathy, sheer humanity. His is a distinctive voice. This collection is a little uneven, but you'd better get it before it goes out of print. Thanks to Soft Skull Press for bringing the material into print.