The Ogre's Wife

Description

Ron Koertge wants to do nothing but delight. Armed with his trademark wit, he introduces readers to Little Red Riding Hood all grown up with a fondness for salsa and chips, explores the thorny relationship of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese, spies a Trojan pony and the children it bamboozles, and offers an alternate reading to the Icarus story. He meets Walt Whitman on the set of an X-rated movie, attends his gardener's funeral, and goes to his beloved race track. Seminal figures from pop mythology speak up in unexpected ways: The Beast, transformed by Beauty, hints that his new life isn't exactly what he expected. Gretel enrolls in night school, the ogre's wife from the beanstalk yarn writes a heart-rending story on her cutting board, and a group of fourth-graders on a field trip encounters Death. Occasionally setting aside free verse, there are couplets about a Bette Davis movie, a sestina about routine blood tests, a villanelle set in a topless bar, and a set of haibun that chronicles an entire day. Reverend Ike and John Lennon said, "Whatever gets you through the night." This book will do just that and carry you right on in to the next day, guaranteed.

Ron Koertge teaches at Hamline University in their low-residency MFA program for Children's Writing. A prolific writer, he has published widely in such seminal magazines as Kayak and Poetry Now. Sumac Press issued The Father Poems in 1973, which was followed by many more books of poetry including Fever (Red Hen Press, 2007), Indigo (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Lies, Knives and Girls in Red Dresses (Candlewick Press, 2012). He is a contributor to many anthologies, such as Billy Collins's Poetry 180 and Kirby & Hamby's Seriously Funny. Koertge also writes fiction for teenagers, including many novels-in-verse: The Brimstone Journals, Stoner & Spaz, Strays, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, and Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs. All were honored by the American Library Association and two received PEN awards. He is the recipient of grants from the NEA and the California Arts Council, and has poems in two volumes of Best American Poetry. He lives in South Pasadena, California.

"Wit, the impeccably dressed and better educated sibling of funny, suffers an unstable reputation: clever yet aloof, socially polished but oddly cold. In the warmer, less formal surroundings of Ron Koertge's poems, however, wit lets down its guard and, behold: charm, intelligence, amazing inventiveness, and a kind of sweetness in its patient regard for a world so frequently bereft of those qualities. So what could be more welcome than a new Koertge collection, where wit presides, and wisdom elegantly clothed in laughter is always in attendance." --B.H. Fairchild "It has been apparent from Ron's earliest published works--many of which long ago qualified as contemporary classics--that he was the most innately talented poet of his generation (mine too: I might call us the Second World War-Babies). No one has been more gifted at transferring to the page the wittiest, most concretely detailed, and most startlingly original conceits of a dazzlingly colloquial phalanx of post-Beat, pre-Boomer bards. With the years he has streamlined his style, with no sacrifice of brilliance. His prose narratives, teaching career, and graceful readings are similarly legendary. Had I the power to do so, I would (in a wink and with one) decorate him as the next Poet Laureate of these good ol' United States." --Gerald Locklin "Ron Koertge's whimsical and smart-hearted poetry has given me decades of pleasure. His unique takes on what once upon a time was a tad ponderously called The Human Condition are here also generous enough to account for Rumpelstiltskin, Icarus, Little Red Riding Hood, and one of the lesser-known Gingerbread Men in baking history. If you're ready to find out who can't wait to sink his teeth into 'a soiled bag / of god-knows what, ' which subject Gretel studies in night school after the death of her beloved Hans, what kind of fireworks the Christ child favors, where 'the body of Matthew Arnold always washes up, ' and why the Trojan Pony 'smells like graham crackers inside, ' then please proceed--without the usual caution. Koertge's poems are good for whatever ails us. They're a lot like the medicine his 'Medication Guide' describes as 'perfectly safe and effective. Well, not perfectly safe. Nothing's perfect. Almost safe. Nearly.' I'm glad to say there's nothing really safe about The Ogre's Wife, and we're already the better for that. Effective? Well, let's just say that in no time you'll feel like a million poetry bucks." --David Clewell, Poet Laureate of Missouri emeritus