Andrew Hudgins Interview in Columbus Dispatch

Books Editor Bill Eichenberger interviewed Andrew Hudgins, the poet behind Shut Up You're Fine, Poems for Very Very Bad Children for The Columbus Dispatch this week, saying "It takes a special kind of mind to get excited by the fact that mommy and salami are a perfect double rhyme." Here is an excerpt from the piece:

Q: My Bed Is Not a Boat is, superficially, funny. But like most of the poems, including I Love Ruby, there is an underlying trauma beneath the veneer of laughter, isn't there?

A: Mel Brooks once said, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die." Comedy is all about perspective. What I like in the poems you mention is that the kids don't even know what they are telling us. Say you got drunk at the junior prom and your date walked out on you. You'd be, I hope, ashamed and miserable for awhile, but after 30 years you can decide if you want to make the story funny when you tell it or, if you are so inclined, you can enjoy your misery all over again. That's also true about being a bed wetter.

Q: You write about a "flawless slice of bread." Is there too insignificant a topic for your poetry?

A: I've never seen a poem about trimming toenails, but I can imagine one. And then it might really have to be about something else, like the importance of insignificant things. In the bread poem, I was trying to capture the way a kid's mind works. I remember being so young I didn't know if there were principles involved in eating a sandwich. Which side should I choose to be the top of the sandwich, and wouldn't that make the bottom side feel rejected? And potato chips. You could spread them out across the plate and eat from large to small. Or, more likely, small to large. But you could also eat from most symmetrical to least. Or ugliest to prettiest. Even though I knew I was being silly, I couldn't stop my mind from wanting to organize the food. Which in retrospect is pretty funny.

Here's a thought about poetic subjects. Just today I saw an article about a group of gastroenterologists offering a prize for the best poem about colonoscopies. I'm guessing they aren't expecting humorous poems. And I'm also guessing that's exactly what they'll get.

Read the entire interview with Barry Moser's illustrations here!

SHUT UP YOU'RE FINE in The Baltimore Sun

Andrew Hudgins's riotously naughty new collection of mischievous poems about the dark side of childhood is now on sale. Illustrated by Barry Moser, Shut Up You're Fine: Poems for Very, Very Bad Children has been called by January Magazine a "compelling and hilariously offensive little book." Bill Eichenberger of The Columbus Dispatch described it as "snort out loud and choke on your coffee funny," and we will post the link to his wonderful interview with Hudgins soon.

Meanwhile, John McIntyre weighed in at The Baltimore Sun:

“Andrew Hudgins, whom I had the good fortune to meet in graduate school in Syracuse, has just brought out another in a distinguished line of collections of poetry: Shut Up, You’re Fine: Poems for Very, Very Bad Children (Overlook Press, 118 pages, $14.95).

Your initial reaction might run along the lines of oh good, something to put on the shelf next to Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies. Well, yes and no. Mr. Hudgins has a distinct taste for the macabre, but these poems explore more deeply the double nature of childhood.

“Bad” children are those who do not meet adults’ expectations. They wet the bed, break things they weren’t supposed to handle, shy away from Grandma’s hugs. These are the children whose parents yell at them and smack them in the supermarket, neglect them, demean them, complain about them and warp. Here’s the voice of one of them:

I’ve got my eye on wedding bands / so Dad can marry Mom / or at least not take another date / to Mom’s third junior prom.

But bad children are also those bad in the bone, harboring little hatreds and destructive impulses, only a step or two removed from Lord of the Flies, ready to grow up into monsters like their parents. Here’s one of them, in “Our Neighbor’s Little Yappy Dog”:

But in the end we all agree / my plan will leave it deader. / I want to feed it—tail-first, slowly / into the chipper-shredder.

I think these verses may not be to everyone’s taste; I’ve been discouraged from reading them aloud at home. They are at once so clear-sighted about how horrible childhood — and children — can be, and yet, undeniably, terribly, funny.

They might move you to recall the work of another poet, Philip Larkin, who wrote: Man hands on misery to man. / It deepens like a coastal shelf. / Get out as early as you can, / And don’t have any kids yourself.”

Naughty But Nice: Andrew Hudgins' SHUT UP YOU'RE FINE Reviewed in City Paper

Andrew Hudgins’ new book of children’s poetry, Shut Up, You’re Fine: Poems for Very, Very Bad Children, is reviewed in the Washington City Paper: "Not as grim as many of his previous works, but it’s hardly Goodnight Moon. Hudgins has written about the psychology of his hard-knock Southern upbringing for nearly 20 years. Until now, his poems have been free-verse catalogues of hard times: By comparison, Shut Up is playful. The childhood stories are less autobiographical and, thankfully, the young speakers aren’t as in need of saving—though they still serve as Hudgins’ vehicle for his ongoing demythification of the archetypal Southern family. As with all of Hudgins’ work, the enthralling narratives and simple verse transcend class and geography, but Shut Up’s best feature is the combined didactic value of its title and its speakers’ perspectives. One can imagine someone breaking out Hudgins’ book when his child complains about limited TV time. You think you’ve got it hard? the parent might ask, before flipping open to “When I Grow Up,” narrated by a child whose parents steal from their jobs to support him. “Daddy brings home legal pads/but mommy brings home gauze/used needles, and heart monitors/like toys from Santa Claus…I can’t wait to land a job/at Kleinman’s jewelry store/I’ve got my eye on wedding bands/so Dad can marry Mom/or at least not take another date/to Mom’s third junior prom,” Hudgins writes. Although there are more than a few genuinely childlike pieces in the anthology, the best poems are about subjects that will fly over most kids’ heads. But even when Hudgins conjures scenes that would give most kids nightmares—noisy headboards, preachers with “secret beliefs,” a dad who turns into the “Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull” after knocking back a few too many—the humor is more gray than black."