Hold
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- 119,00 kr
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- 119,00 kr
Utgivarens beskrivning
"Bob Hicok is a spectrum... I’d love to see an MRI of his brain while he’s writing, as the neurons show us what’s possible, how a human can be a thought leader, taking us into the future… Hicok interrogates the world with mercy and wit and style and intelligence and modest swag. He’s one of America’s favorites—and to make the reader want to share the poet’s reality fulfills poetry’s finest aspiration." —Washington Independent Review of Books
"In his ninth collection, Hicok navigates a world bereft of empathy and kindness, leading by example with a charm and emotional intelligence that speaks to a deep insight into the human condition… Mixing cleverness with tenderness, Hicok demonstrates how to be a beacon of light in the darkest of settings." —Publishers Weekly
Bob Hicok’s tenth collection of poetry, Hold, moves nimbly between childlike revelry and serious introspection. While confronting the rampant hypocrisies of the American collective unconscious, Hicok is guided by his deep and tender sense of whimsy and humility. Pointing to the natural world as a mirror through which to rediscover human beauty, he pauses to unapologetically celebrate the wonder of living at all.
From "About the size of it":
. . . my breath
shuttling in and out, as if it can’ t decide
between stay and go, the little bird
long gone by the time I realize
the sun has set and it will soon feel
like my father was never here, which is no big deal
compared to the erasures the world endures
and offers every day, except this one is mine
Bob Hicok teaches at Virginia Tech University and is the author of ten collections, including Animal Soul, This Clumsy Living , Elegy Owed, and Sex & Love &. He is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, respectively.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his ninth collection, Hicok (Sex & Love &) navigates a world bereft of empathy and kindness, leading by example with a charm and emotional intelligence that speaks to a deep insight into the human condition. Hicok identifies societal ills including police brutality, renascent Nazism, and unfettered capitalism without becoming mired in cynicism. To be alive, in Hicok's esteem, is a blessing that should not be wasted: "why punch the world in the face/ when that's a very big face." Instead, he celebrates human possibility, intimacy, grace, and "the crinkle-crinkle/ of the candy wrapper of the soul." In a hilarious send-up of American individualism titled "There's no i in unity after the first i," Hicok writes of Frank Sinatra's hit, " My Way' should only be sung underwater,/ so the narcissism is softened a bit/ by drowning." In "For love of the game," he imagines the Green Bay Packers huddling on the field to discuss Stephen Hawking and Susan Sontag in a comment on toxic masculinity and homoeroticism in sports. In more personal poems, Hicok contends with the specter of death, both his own and the difficulty of watching one's parents age and prepare for their own ends. Mixing cleverness with tenderness, Hicok demonstrates how to be a beacon of light in the darkest of settings.