“Make eye contact with a tree.” “Do not practice cannibalism.” “Wear comfortable shoes. “Sing, every once in a while.” “In later life, become a mystic.” Offbeat, warm, and funny, Ron Padgett’s prescriptions for human perfection spring to life in Jason Novak’s cartoons—a glorious match-up of sensibilities. And remember: “Don’t give advice.”
Ron Padgett grew up in Tulsa and has lived mostly in New York City since 1960. Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters poetry award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Padgett’s How Long was Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry and his Collected Poems won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Los Angeles Times prize for the best poetry book of 2013.
Jason Novak is a cartoonist whose work has appeared in the New Yorker the Paris Review and the Believer among other places. He lives in Oakland.
Reviews
Praise for Ron Padgett
“Agile and lucid and glad to be alive.”—James Tate
“Reading Padgett one realizes that playfulness and lightness of touch are not at odds with seriousness.”—Charles Simic, New York Review of Books
“Padgett’s sense of romantic joy is undiminished, as is his thoughtfulness about language and the ways in which time changes meaning, and sense can morph into eloquent absurdity.”—Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly