What former English major wouldn’t get a kick out of “The Lamb Cycle,” by David R. Ewbank, with illustrations by Kate Feiffer (Brandeis University Press)? In it, Ewbank, a Kent State University professor emeritus, imagines how English poets — from Spenser and Shakespeare to Philip Larkin and Stevie Smith — might have reworked the Mother Goose classic “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Here’s the appropriately macabre opening of Coleridge’s “The Crime of the Urchin Mary”: “It was an ancient crone who wrote / Silly rhymes for tots / Was stopped by a maid in a pinafore / With blood-red polkadots.” That last phrase delivers the true Gothic shiver.
—The Washington Post

David Ewbank's versatility in the art of literary imitation is nothing short of shapeshifting.
—Billy Collins

“The Lamb Cycle made me laugh with delight even as it delivered a masterclass on poetic form. David R. Ewbank captures each of the great poets’ stylistic tics and thematic preoccupations, and imbues them with a visionary verve all his own. The poems are perfectly paired with Kate Feiffer’s elegant illustrations, brimming with wit and wonderment.”
—Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist

I read through [the poems] and thought that they were funny and brilliant . . . . I had a vision pretty immediately of what the illustrations could look like.”
—Vineyard Gazette, Illustrator Kate Feiffer

David R. Ewbank has just published the funniest poetry book of the year. But it isn’t just funny: it is “seriously funny”, to appropriate the felicitous title of the poetry anthology edited a few years ago by Barbara Hamby and David Kirby... Indeed, several of his parodies would rank among the best poems ever written by his targets, had they in fact written them. Endlessly delightful.
—Carl M. Jenk, Poetry Corner

A tour de force for our times... The Lamb Cycle gives us a new take on Mary and her lamb. Whether evoking the Renaissance, the Victorian Age, or modern life in language and art, David Ewbank and Kate Feiffer perform with panache.
—Martha's Vineyard Times

David R. Ewbank is professor emeritus of English Literature at Kent State University. He has authored A Distant Summer and a collection of parodies entitled Fairy Tales for Adults, famous stories as they might have been written by classic American authors. He also served as co-editor of the multivolume collection The Complete Works of Robert Browning. He lives in Ohio.

Kate Feiffer’s illustrations have appeared in magazines, newspapers, and on television. She is the author of eleven highly acclaimed children’s books, including Henry the Dog with No Tail and My Mom is Trying to Ruin My Life, and the event producer for the Martha’s Vineyard-based writers festival Islanders Write.

James Engell is Gurney Professor of English Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.