{"id":13257,"date":"2014-01-27T09:37:28","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T15:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=13257"},"modified":"2014-01-27T09:37:28","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T15:37:28","slug":"book-report-poetry-for-cats-by-henry-beard-1994","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/27\/book-report-poetry-for-cats-by-henry-beard-1994\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Poetry for Cats<\/i> by Henry Beard (1994)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Book<\/a>This book<\/a> was a part of my beautiful wife’s collection until she decided to winnow her collection down. I culled the discards for books I wanted, and so I got this one. Which I might have gotten for her as a gift in the swirling clouds of the past.<\/p>\n

This book is a collection of poems as written by famous poets’ cats. You’ve got “The Cat’s Tale” by Chaucer’s cat, “Vet, Be Not Proud” by John Donne’s cat, “Kubla Kat” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s cat, and so on.<\/p>\n

They’re very clever, and I felt very clever and\/or well-read for recognizing most of the source material. It only cost me $40,000 plus interest in an English degree for that.<\/p>\n

But, as with my riff about the loss of allusion in heavy metal music<\/a>, I have to wonder if there are many Generation X-level people who would enjoy this book or if there are any members of later generations that would get them at all. Some, I suppose, but not many. Ah, life. There is no before-me, there is no after-me, there is only during-me.<\/p>\n

At any rate, as I said, I enjoyed the brief little book, and the book made me want to re-read the poems they were based on. Did you know I used to be able to recite “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from memory? Indeed, I used to do it at poetry open-mic nights in St. Louis, and I impressed my beautiful wife (then my beautiful girlfriend)’s mother, an English teacher in high school, by reciting it to her the first time we met. But that’s been a long time. I should work on re-memorizing those things.<\/p>\n

Books mentioned in this review:<\/b>
\n