Charles Harper Webb

In the fast-paced, sexy, and very scary literary thriller Ursula Lake, a husband and wife trying to save their marriage and a rock musician trying to get his career back on track find big trouble, natural and possibly supernatural, in the spellbinding wilds of British Columbia.


Ursula Lake is a rare novel that is equal parts lyrical and suspenseful.  Charles Harper Webb uses his poet’s voice to weave a haunting tale that marries the latent horrors of the natural world to the dark heart of the humans who inhabit it.

                        —Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women
 

Nobody handles language like a poet. So whenever I see a novel written by a poet I admire, I know I'm in for a treat.  Charles Harper Webb's Ursula Lake is scary, emotionally wrenching, sexy, tender, and full of natural beauty. It's also lively, fast-paced, and fun to read as it rips into the comforting lies that prop civilization up. In this novel, Webb shows why he's won so may writing awards. Take my advice, and plunge head-first into Ursula Lake. 

                        —Ron Koertge, author of Yellow Moving Van

              


 

With twelve full-length books and a spate of major prizes, Charles Harper Webb—once a well-kept secret in the poetry underground—has risen to the center stage of American poetry.  Brain Camp—vintage Webb, with even greater depth and range than before— shows clearly why Webb has been called one of the most inventive, incisive, and entertaining poets writing in the U.S.A. today, as well as one of the most profound.    

 

Webb is celebrated for his use of humor; yet even his funniest poems rise, as the best humor must, from serious human drives and needs.  Powered by a fierce, compassionate intelligence, Brain Campexplores 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 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."

Something is rotten in the state of American poetry.  With respect to audience and artistry, poetry has shot intself 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.  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 concrete tips that working writers can use, how poetry can return to cultural relevance again.  Webb champions poems that enlighten as they entertain—as these extraordinary essays do.

With ten full-length books and a spate of major prizes, Charles Harper Webb—once a well-kept secret in the poetry underground—has risen to the center stage of American poetry.  Brain Camp—vintage Webb, with even greater depth and range than before— shows clearly why Webb has been called one of the most inventive, incisive, and entertaining poets writing in the U.S.A. today, as well as one of the most profound.    

 

Webb is celebrated for his use of humor; yet even his funniest poems rise, as the best humor must, from serious human drives and needs.  Powered by a fierce, compassionate intelligence, Brain Campexplores 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 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."

Listen. There’s a new collection out from one of America’s most gifted poets, whose work combines a rare and engaging blend of wit, imagination, and heart. Beneath the brilliantly comic surface is Webb’s celebration of humanity—our capacity for wonder in the throes of the mundane, our slapstick stubbornness in the face of lousy odds (henpecked Harold is now a baked potato). Need a dose of raucous sanity to help you juke through toil’s weekly gauntlet? Step right up. Hectored by those who insist the best poems must always be dour and difficult?  As The Divine Miss M would observe, “Fuck em if they can’t take a joke.”
—William Trowbridge, author of Maintenance

 

Charles Harper Webb, who carried into new generations the humor of poet Ed Fields, the mischief of Monty Python, and the deranged and outrageous imaginings of the absurdist Russell Edson -- is Back.  (And, further, he never left.)  WARNING (not a trigger warning, the other kind): He or She (or They), or They, She or He, who disparages this collection will forthwith be set upon by the Guinea Pigs of Chagrin. Maybe. 
—Suzanne Lummis, author of Crime Wave  (2025)

Webb marries poetry and prose and we—lucky readers—get to go on the honeymoon.  The Elephant of Surprise is full of sass and candor, gratifyingly off-kilter, and untimately heartening.
—Ron Koertge, author of Fever