Books : Please, Lord, Make Me a Famous Poet or at Least Less Fat
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by: Dean Blehert
Amazon.com's Price: $19.95 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 9 to 13 days
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.54
EAN: 9781892261038
ISBN: 1892261030
Label: Words & Pictures East Coast LLC
Manufacturer: Words & Pictures East Coast LLC
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 1999-03
Publisher: Words & Pictures East Coast LLC
Sales Rank: 1952185
Studio: Words & Pictures East Coast LLC
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A smorgasbord of parody and satire of poets and poetry, it spares no targets, taking on the classics and current fads, the exquisite pangs of feigned interest at polite poetry readings, the young poet's alienation from a world that hasn't noticed his greatness, and the proliferation in literary reviews of 'fresh new voices' that all sound the same. It's funny, informative and challenging. What's more, it manages to achieve the breadth of humor needed to make it accessible to readers who do not know much about English poetry, while showing a loving attention to tone and detail (especially in the parodies) that should make it required reading for poetry lovers.
One indication of its breadth of appeal are the fact that it sports rave blurbs from both Dana Gioia and Lyn Lifshin, from opposite ends of the poetry spectrum. The humor ranges from raucous (a Shakespearean sonnet beginning 'Shall I compare thee to a guy named Fred?') to refined ('Leapeth frogge/And splas! heth bog --/Softe sing haiku...'), from the ridiculous (punning 'Little Richard' and 'literature') to the sublime ('In the good old days, most poets were consigned to oblivion. These days even oblivion won't take poets on consignment.')
The book takes the form of a mock textbook. Some of the funniest stuff is in the hundreds of footnotes, and one must not skip the poetic aphorisms and one-liners that punctuate the beginning of each chapter.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - More Fun Than A Barrel Full Of Poets
If you've been out of school for a while you might be a little rusty on all the literary references that populate this book. Chock full o' parodies, Dean Blehert has more than a way with words -- he has a way with other people's words.
An entire chapter of Please Lord is devoted to how famous poets -- living and dead -- would write "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink." These writers include Sylvia Plath, Lyn Lifshin, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Blake.
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Rating: - Dean Blehert is a genius. Period.
Fireworks, Roman candles, fizzgigs...they're always going off in Dean Blehert's mind, all the time. When you pick up a copy of Please, Lord, Make Me a Famous Poet or At Least Less Fat, you get 402 pages of peerless wit and erudition. Blehert knows just about everything there is to know about poetry in the English language, and nearly all of his knowledge is displayed in this book, in his characteristic melange of parody, punning and reasoned discourse. Some people may dismiss Blehert as a show-off, ... Read More
Rating: - Think of this as the written Steve Martin in pentameter
Next time you want entertainment, forget the movies and TV. Get thee to a bookstore or Amazon. Skip past the so-called humor books, and go directly to the...gasp...poetry section. Don't be afraid. You may have a difficult time finding it, but once there, the name Dean Blehert will be prominently displayed on the bindings of several unique and hilarious books. Pick any one(s) you want, but be certain to include his latest in your trove. "Please, Lord,et.al." is not only a poet's primer, but very tasty brain ... Read More
Rating: - A ROMP! Jonathan Swift and Shakespeare have a food-fight!
Having encountered Mr. Blehert's writings serveral times past in smaller scale situations, I was not sure what to expect from this extensive and even "Fat" compendium of his labors. So I looked inside....THEN I started laughing. Still laughing, I read more....and more..... and then I began to be REALLY impressed. Mr. Blehert has done ALL his homework, and even iinvented lots of extra-credit assignments. A Doctorate of Letters ultimately inevitable, once a few scholastics with a combination of humor ... Read More
Rating: - I'm learning more about literature by laughing
Picked up "Please, Lord..." and am reading fervently. I think I'm learning more about literature by laughing at it than I did in those vacuuous, slumber-inducing lectures in college. So I am appreciative of the fresh look at this thing called poetry which ranks up there with ice cream in my list of favorite things in the world.
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