Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead Essay & Criticism

Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead Critical Overview

Andrew Hudgins's poems appear in such diverse anthologies as the annual volume The Best American Poetry (1995, 1998), The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology, The Columbia Book of Civil War Poetry, and Upholding Mystery: an Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry . David Impastato, editor of the latter volume, notes Hudgins's "use of an iambic line . . . to sustain his intimate, colloquial voice" as well as his "link with a Southern Gothic tradition." However, Impastato's introduction gives a less compelling reason for including Hudgins in his collection of religious poetry than Richard Tillinghast does in a review of The Never-Ending, the volume in which "Elegy for My Father" appears. Tillinghast describes Hudgins's poems as "clear and accessible," humorous and bawdy, but that underneath the "disarming personal frankness [lies] a religious sensibility. . . . He may be praying drunk," comments Tillinghast, "but he is...
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