Not every laugh is a belly laugh. There are chuckles and giggles as well as guffaws. But one thing is certain in this troubled world: Laughter beats the pants off gloom and doom. As poet David Hedges, a master rib-tickler, informs the reader in his title poem: “Gravity is for the grave.”
In the late 1940s, Hedges spent Saturday afternoons in the confines of Portland's Blue Mouse Theatre, soaking up the slapstick antics of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy — and the ribald banter of W.C. Fields and Mae West. He and older brother Joe staged comic backyard theatricals. He went on to edit the Beaver dam, the Oregon State College humor magazine of the mid-1950s, and later, pen a humor column for a small daily newspaper.
There's something here for everyone. Chuckles and giggles, to be sure, and maybe even a guffaw. And — on the cover and scattered throughout the book — hilarious illustrations by Portland’s inimitable Jim Agpalza!
As a bonus, a subset of the indie rock band Hedgefire will play at both ends of the reading.
Praise for David Hedges from the late X.J. Kennedy
X.J. Kennedy, author of nine collections of verse, received the Poets’ Prize, the Robert Frost medal from the Poetry Society of America, and a prize for light verse from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Cover blurb for A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to a Geology Degree (Finishing Line Press, 2011):
“Here’s a heartening, hilarious, and hugely enjoyable saga drawn from the experience of dropping out of college into poetry. In New York’s teeming Village of the late fifties, our protagonist revels in a world bequeathed him by the magnificent drunken poet Dylan Thomas. Imagine! — poems that keep you fastened to your chair, expectantly turning the pages! I’m a Hedges fan for life.”
Cover blurb for Prospects of Life After Birth: Memoir in Poetry & Prose (Road’s End Press, 2019):
“David Hedges has given us a major work of literature — an account of his early life, in vivid, masterfully crafted verse. Characters are drawn memorably. Readers will find Prospects of Life After Birth a startling mirror of their own growing up, and a rare view of growing up given by the incisive mind of a first-rate writer.”
Excerpt from a profile of David Hedges by X.J. Kennedy in the Winter-Spring 2020 issue of Light: A Journal of Light Verse:
“E. B. White’s conviction that writing light verse is just as hard as writing heavy poetry may well apply to David Hedges. He has written both with tremendous skill. Hedges has proved himself among the country’s most able and versatile poets.”
A TROPHY FIT FOR A KING
“South African lions eat ‘poacher,’ leaving just his head”
—BBC News headline
A poacher set out with the aim
Of dispatching South African game.
With his Nitro Express
He was primed for success
And a shoo-in for fortune and fame.
The lions he happened to meet
Were delighted and made haste to eat
Both his lip-smacking haunch
And his succulent paunch
Not to mention his hands and his feet.
The lions heard voices and fled
Without taking the late poacher’s head.
Their intent? To come back,
Mount his head on a plaque
For display on the wall of their den.
David Hedges served six years as president of the Oregon Poetry Association and has been a member of the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission since 1988. He co-founded, with State Librarian Jim Scheppke and Poet Laureate Lawson Inada, the Oregon Poetry Collection at the University of Oregon’s Knight Library, and received the 2003 Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award from Literary Arts, Inc. for outstanding contributions to Oregon’s literary life. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Poet Lore, Measure, Trinacria, Able Muse, and Light: A Journal of Light Verse — and, closer to home, Northwest Magazine, Calapooya Collage, Left Bank, and Windfall.