Babylon in a Jar: Poems

I cannot recommend this book of poetry more highly. I have read Babylon in a Jar, over numerous times and still never grow weary of it. Andrew Hudgins has a way of combining what it is to be spirit and flesh in such a way that comes to terms with the essence of what it is to be human. His poems are funny, difficult, and from the heart. He is a man of experience who is willing to be transparent about his faults and shortcomings as he grapples with the circumstances he has created and the ones he finds himself surrounded by. "In the Red Seats" and "Rain" are powerful poems showing his range from finding the face of God in a drunkard to a poem speaking profoundly of the lives that are sacrificed so we may live. Hudgins merits more recognition than he receives.

I have read and re-read this book and always find something new to love. Andrew's narrative southern voice is at once humorous and true. Although his poetry is usually written in playful formalism, there is a bit more of the lyric in this book. His fusion of the divine and the earthy here is particularly effective.

I would dare to say that those who have problems with Babylon in a Jar perhaps have not read it closely enough. While what he does here is a great departure from his style in After the Lost War the poems still have a great deal of quality and are linked by the paradox between love and death, or Eros and Thanatos as Hudgins put it when I talked to him today. The dust of Babylon in a jar is a metaphor that can relate to almost every poem in the book, the collection is not haphazard as someone has suggested and while After the Lost War remains my favorite Hudgins work Babylon in the jar has some excellent gems of poetry inside and is eminitely readable.

"After Muscling through sharp greenery and after lopping humped limbs back as far as lopping shears would take them"So begins a poem in Babylon In A Jar who's structure and form evokes the mythic narrative quality of the best of Gary Snyder married to the intuitive grasp of rhythm that Dylan Thomas wrote in so well. Hudgins speaks in a common language rich in metaphor of simple moments in life, yet without wallowing in the sentimental.This is by the far the strongest single voice in poetry to write consistently well - poem after poem, book after book, within the past decade. I checked out five of his titles from the library and opened each at random without disappointment. Nothing good said of this writer should be taken for hyperbole. Babylon In A Jar is among his best.

Each of Andrew Hudgins' books makes one hunger for the next. His work is brilliant, true, and beautifully accessible.