| Italic Title: | Practical Gods |
| Practical Gods | |
| Author: | Carl Dennis |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Genre: | Poetry |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books |
| Pub Date: | 2001 |
| Isbn: | 0141002301 |
Practical Gods is a collection of poems by Carl Dennis published in 2001 by Penguin Books. The collection won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry[1] and the 2000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.[2]
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.[3] The poems of Practical Gods can be generally described as free verse[4] and which John Taylor called "thinking poetry" given a heavy emphasis on "exposition of thought" rather than sensory description.[5] Donna Seaman described the register of the collection as "plainspoken".[6]