''Practical Gods'' is a collection of poems by

Carl Dennis Carl Dennis (born September 17, 1939) is an American poet and educator. His book ''Practical Gods'' won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Life and work Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 17, 1939, Dennis attended Oberlin College and the ...

published in 2001 by

Penguin Books Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the ...

. The collection won the

2002 The effects of the September 11 attacks of the previous year had a significant impact on the affairs of 2002. The war on terror was a major political focus. Without settled international law, several nations engaged in anti-terror operation ...

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes awarded annually for Letters, Drama, and Music. The award came five years after the first Pulitzers were awarded in other categories; Joseph Pulitzer's will had not ment ...

and the 2000

Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is awarded annually by The Poetry Foundation, which also publishes ''Poetry'' magazine. The prize was established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly. It honors a living U.S. poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordin ...

Contents and description

One of the guiding motifs of the collection is the imagined interaction between humans and gods, for which Dennis draws off the Greek and Christian pantheons. The poems of ''Practical Gods'' can be generally described as

free verse Free verse is an open form of poetry which does not use a prescribed or regular meter or rhyme and tends to follow the rhythm of natural or irregular speech. Free verse encompasses a large range of poetic form, and the distinction between free ...

and which John Taylor called "thinking poetry" given a heavy emphasis on "exposition of thought" rather than sensory description. Donna Seaman described the register of the collection as "plainspoken".

References

{{Poetry-collection-stub 2001 poetry books Pulitzer Prize for Poetry–winning works