Originally published: New York: American Council on Education: Macmillan Pub. Co., c1989, in series: American Council on Education/Macmillan series in higher education.

Something is rotten in the state of American poetry.  With respect to audience and artistry, poetry has shot itself in many portions of its anatomy, and keeps blasting.  The fact that vast numbers of poems are published every year, and a large number of Creative Writing students and graduates combine to read a few of them, does not mean that poetry is on the right track.  How has the erstwhile Queen of the Arts been consigned to the tiny corner of the cultural basement where she languishes today—and how can she get out?  As an acclaimed poet and veteran teacher of poetry, Charles Harper Webb knows what it takes for a poem to grab a reader's attention and hold on.  As a former rock singer/guitarist and a licensed psychotherapist, he understands how to connect with an audience.  A Million MFAs Are Not Enough shows—with wit and style and concrete tips that working writers can use—how poetry can return to cultural relevance again.   

 Charles Harper Webb’s eccentric and distinct writing style makes this collection of poetry a funny and charmingly memorable read. A melting pot of pop culture, historical references, and everyday life, Webb’s poems are refreshingly candid and straightforward.  

Former best friends Scott and Errol meet unexpectedly at Oso Lake, a remote Canadian fly-fishing paradise where, five years before, fresh out of college, they had the time of their lives. Their situations, though, have changed, their high hopes quashed by workaday realities and, in Errol's case, marriage to Claire, who has come with him trying to stave off divorce. But Oso Lake has changed. The fall before, a woman's severed head was left in a campfire pit beside the lake. The shadow cast by her murder is darkened further by a fire-scarred white truck driver who claims to be a long-dead Native shaman and has plans to eradicate not only Scott, Errol, and Claire, but all of Western civilization. The beauty of the wilderness becomes, every day, more threatening and perverse. But the worst danger the vacationers face may be themselves.

Powered by a fierce, compassionate intelligence, Brain Camp explores with clarity and vividness a wide spectrum of emotions—love to hate, tenderness to brutality—all from a perspective both universal yet distinctly Webb's. Metaphors of startling aptness and originality, a voice at once endearing and provocative, high musicality, propulsive energy, wild imaginative leaps, as well as a mastery of diction from lyricism to street-speak, create a reading experience of the first order. These poems go down easy, but pack a wallop. As Robert Frost said poetry should do, Brain Camp "begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

An accessible new and selected collection of poems for poetry insiders and general readers. Powerful, passionate, humorous, and often complex, yet fun to read. They go down easy, but pack a whallop.

With eleven full-length books and a spate of major prizes, Charles Harper Webb—once a well-kept secret in the poetry underground—has gained national recognition as a writer of poems that are complex yet reader-friendly. Sidebend World shows clearly why Webb has been called one of the most inventive, incisive, and psychologically astute poets writing in the U.S.A. today, as well as one of the most entertaining. Webb is celebrated for his use of humor; yet even his funniest poems rise, as the best humor must, from serious concerns. Powered by an uncompromising but compassionate intelligence and an abiding wonder at the beautiful strangeness of the world, Sidebend World explores with clarity and vividness a wide range of emotions—love to hate, tenderness to brutality; yet, above all, Webb is a poet of praise. Metaphors of startling aptness and originality, a distinctive voice at once provocative and endearing, high musicality, propulsive energy, wild imaginative leaps, as well as mastery of diction from lyricism to street-speak, create a reading experience of the first order. These poems go down easy, but pack a wallop. As Robert Frost said poetry should do, Sidebend World "begins in delight and ends in wisdom."