Alan Dugan's poems scour off the sentiment and leave your bones gleaming. How has he stayed so loyal to actual? Obviously, it hasn't been easy. ( )

I bought this book in hardcover, when it came out in 2001, at the now-defunct Tudor Bookshop, and I've been pecking away at it intermittently in the long, crazy decade since. Poems Seven was a revelation to me then, and a pleasure to revisit now: Dugan's poetry has swagger and bite, a caustic energy that appealed to a younger, more uncertain version of myself and that remains bracing and enjoyable today, even though I can perceive now its limitations. A drinker and womanizer, a formerly low-level Madison Avenue adman and roustabout, a cantakerous Marxist lover of the classics, Dugan's poetry bristles with profanity, sex, and the violence of the world. If it can be said that his prosody did not vary much of the course of his long career -- he consistently produces short lyrics in jagged bursts of free verse, with sardonic titles -- it must also be said that his voice was genuinely distinctive, an expression of an echt American original. ( )

Alan Dugan is blunt, honest and direct. His poems are remarkable. ( )