Goodwill Buddha, Goodwill Hunting,
Blog Post by Robert Sward - Jan.26.2010 - 12:10 am

The irrepressible aliveness and weird wisdom of the father-son series should win it a lasting place in the literature of our day. -Robyn Sarah, Globe & Mail, Toronto.
$17.00
Paperback
On Front Street, next door to Santa Cruz' Museum of Art and History (MAH), directly across from Trader Joe's, is a secondhand store, well, it's like a Goodwill gone to seed. Old clothes, bric a brac... but on occasion they display ill-shapened Buddhas in the front window. At one level it's like a pet store with initially appealing but something-off-with-them creatures in the window and you wanna go inside and rescue 'em all. And that's what I'm thinking when I walk in, rescue Buddha... bring one home. And then don't. I'm still lookin'. Goodwill hunting.
These are such, sad, generous poems--peopled with characters it's impossible not to love, especially Robert's podiatrist-Jewish-Rosicrucian father with his wisdom that bridges dualities expounding on the feet and the soul, sex and death, the broken and the whole. In one poem, Robert asserts, In a world of 'No, dogs are a Yes.' And in the world of poetry, this book is a resounding Yes. Read it when you're happy, but especially read it when you're depressed. You'll find yourself joining in with the many dogs in these poems, saying, 'Woof, woof f----in' woof!”
—Poet Ellen Bass
About Robert
Guggenheim Fellow, chosen by Lucille Clifton for a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award, author of more than 20 books, including Four Incarnations (Coffee House Press), Heavenly Sex, God is in the Cracks and The Collected Poems (now in its 2nd printing),...
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Causes Robert Sward Supports
Audubon Society, National Geographic, "Green," the Environment, SPCA...
Robert’s Favorite Books
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Saul Bellow's Adventures of Augie March, Ezra Pound's Make It New, T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems, The Autobiography of Benjamin...














Ha. Classic quandary when
Ha. Classic quandary when rescuing pets from animal shelters, but I've never seen it applied to ill-shaped Buddhas. At least it wouldn't chew the rugs.
Buddha
Missed opportunity to buy 'em earlier (got there too late), couldn't get ill-shaped Buddhas out of my mind. Then... well, up close they were a disappointment. Thanks for comment...