Tony HoaglandReseñas

Published just four months before his death, this volume demonstrates [a:Tony Hoagland|78570|Tony Hoagland|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1408734157p2/78570.jpg]'s satire, his humor, and even his hope:

"My heroes are the ones who don’t say much.
They don’t hug people they just met.
They don’t play louder when confused.
They use plain language even when they listen."

"Wisdom doesn’t come to every Californian.
Chances are I too will die with difficulty in the dark."

Or from “Which Would You Prefer, A Story or an Explanation?”
“I can’t tell the difference between inner peace and mild depression, / writes her friend from Philadelphia, in small blue script / on the back of a postcard of Chagall.”

and my favorite, “Hope:”
“I didn’t belong in the Twenty-First Century. / I didn’t belong anywhere anymore. / I sat in my old-fashioned kitchen / staring at the green Formica counter. / That’s when the butterfly floated through the window, / and landed on the artificial flower.”

I think I was introduced to Tony Hoagland by Judd Appatow in his book [b:I Found This Funny|8482884|I Found This Funny My Favorite Pieces of Humor and Some That May Not Be Funny At All|Judd Apatow|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1286566518s/8482884.jpg|13348016]. Hoaglund's poetry is super funny, but not silly-jokey-ha-ha funny. It's like a stabbing funny.

Great poems

Why did I think I'd enjoy this? One or two poems that made me laugh, for the rest I just cringed through the psyche of a privileged white man.

I just discovered another poet, that speaks to me.

Tony Hoagland, Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays

Oh Tony, how I loved reading this book! This is Hoaglands second collection of essays. I read the first, Real Sofistikashun, and don’t remember being so bowled over, but perhaps I’ll read it again. At a different time of life, the same book seem a different book entirely.

The first few essays in Twenty Poems That Could Save America (even their titles excite me) concern diction, idiom (he’s all for common speech — think William Stafford, Billy Collins) — the shape and structure of poems, and their effects.

— Je Suis ein Americano: The Genius of American Diction
— Idiom, Our Funny Valentine
— Litany, Game, and Representation: Charting the Course from the Old to the New Poetry
— Poetic Housing: Shifting Parts and Changing Wholes
— Facts and Feelings: Information, Layering, and the Composite Poem
— Vertigo, Recognition, and Passionate Worldliness

These chapters are followed by several on specific poets, such as Dean Young; Frank O’Hara et al., Sharon Olds; Marie Howe, Jane Hirshfield, and Linda Gregg; and Bly. I was less interested in the chapters on specific poets. I liked best the one on Sharon Olds and least the one on Bly.

But the last, the title essay (which originally appeared in Harper’s online), about contemporary poetry and its potential (rightful?) place in American contemporary life, is the best and brightest. I wanted to underline everything. I have already reread more than once. Hoagland has strong opinions about the importance of language and poetry, how language has been co-opted and corrupted by business, politics, the media, and how its modern uses have made us distrustful — of language! It’s true.

I know that poets and critics are always going on about whether or not poetry is relevant to contemporary life and about how maligned poetry is. People I know don’t so much say they dislike it as that they don’t understand it. And, indeed, Hoagland maintains that many people think that poetry belongs to high culture and that they’re not clever enough to understand it or else that poetry just has nothing to say to them, nothing practical to say about the world.

As a remedy, Hoagland argues for an overhaul of the way poetry is taught in school, as well as a big change in the specific poems taught, so that poetry can be seen as contemporary and vital and full of meaning for ourselves, our country, the world. He believes that poetry can elevate our level of discourse, enrich us and our culture. He offers 20 poems that he believes have a lot to say to the citizens of contemporary America — not the only 20 such poems out there, but a selection. And they are wonderful. They reward many rereadings and endless musing.

Overall, a wonderful and passionate book about both the practice of poetry and the ways in which it can enrich our lives — "...for poetry is our common treasure house, and we need its aliveness, its respect for the subconscious, its willingness to entertain ambiguity; we need its plaintive truth telling about the human condition and its imaginative exhibitions of linguistic freedom, which confront the general culture's more grotesque manipulations. We need the emotional training sessions poetry conducts us through. We need its previews of coming attractions: heartbreak, survival, failure, endurance, understanding, more heartbreak."

Aslide: I was perplexed by the inclusion in Hoagland’s 20 of Whitman’s “I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” It’s a poem I’ve always disliked, but then I’m strongly opposed to championing anti-intellectualism. There’s a place for gazing at the stars, sure, but there’s also a place for learning. And how much more astounding the heavens, how much greater our wonder, when our gazing is informed by science!

The title intrigued me. And irritated me. And the book never gives any explanation for the odd spelling - or even why the title was chosen.

Because it's about poetry, I will probably keep my copy, but it's the least favorite of my books about poetry. My favorite books about poetry inspire me to write new verse. This book didn't produce new work, although - perhaps coincidentally - I did rewrite a poem I had worked on before about a hitchhiking bee. The book is all about modern poetics, that use little or no rhythm/rhyme. Learning about poetic forms (think Rondeau, for instance) often generates an attempt to use the new form, but there was none of that here.

Some of the examples are interesting. Although I'm still not convinced that the work of Apollinaire is all that great.

I read this book twice. The first time through, I was distracted by all the marginal notes added by the previous owner. I assume it was for a college class - only selected essays got the note-taking treatment. Most of the notes were simply vocabulary (and on words I was already familiar with, although the one word that I had to look up lacked a notation).

Now a bit of back story. I subscribe to Poetry magazine. When it arrives, I am often excited to see what's within. Then I'm disappointed to find nothing I like. I struggle with the section the editor calls "Commentary." Much of the writing is in extreme academic language, and I find it singularly opaque. So I definitely found Tony Hoagland's essays more readable. But on the second reading, I found that I still wasn't "getting it." For example, the essay "Sad Anthropologists" which was about tone left me wondering if I even know what was meant by tone, and if I could ever learn to identify it when I saw it.

The last essay left me feeling unhappy with the whole book. Maybe that's unfair, but there it is. His point was that poetry with a bit of "meanness" was more, shall I say, meaningful. He even complained about a Marianne Moore poem ("The Mind is a Wonderful Thing") for not being mean enough. Give me a break!

i enjoy Tony Hoagland's poetry. I started with his exceptional What Narcissism Means to Me ("No longer do I live by the law of me,/ No longer having the excuse of youth or craziness,/ And dying you know shows a serious ingratitude/ For sunsets and beehive hairdos and the precious green corrugated/ Pickles they place at the edge of your plate"). This new one, Application for Release from the Dream, is another standout. He's a playful poet, and there's a wistfulness here for what has been lost both personally (particularly his failed marriage) and more widely. In his "Ode to the Republic", he sees the positive in America's diminished stature - "It's good to be unimportant . . . There are worse things than being/ second burrito".

On the personal level, "a third choice exists/ between resignation and/ going around the bend . . ." That choice may be accepting our and the world's limitations. "What kind of idiot would think he even had a destiny?"

"The flaring force of this thing we call identity
as if it were a message, a burning coal

one carries in one’s mouth for sixty years,
for delivery
to whom, exactly; to where?”

He takes his own measure with a glint of humor: "All those years I kept trying and failing and trying/ to find my one special talent in this life--/ Why did it take me so long to figure out/ that my special talent was trying?"

Try reading some Tony Hoagland poetry.

This wonderfully intelligent book explore some of the most pressing issues facing America today: egotism, capitalism, race and the modern definition of love. His acerbic wit and aggressive intellect proves a fantastic combination for this style of poetry. Unequivocally brilliant, Hoagland provides a masterclass in poetry in less than 100 pages.

Here are my favorites: Crazy Motherfucker Weather, Reasons to Be Happy, White Writer, Controlled Substances, The Social Life of Water, and, But the Men.

Generally with poetry books I tend to skip around, linger between poems... This particular book - I devoured greedily within a few hours, one poem after the next.

I love, love, love these poems. That's my review, so sue me, but don't dare flag this as "not a review."

It's hard to reach a conclusion about this volume other than uneven. The many poems criticizing modern life seem a little facile, though doubtless entertaining. There are also some really excellent poems in here, deeply felt and moving.½

I did not love this collection as much as the last two. Maybe in part it's just getting used to his style? Not sure. Different themes seem to recur in each book and the ones this time -- international politics, consumerism, cancer -- didn't strike as much of a chord with me as some of the earlier topics.

Some pieces may not age well, with references to Bill Gates, Britney Spears, the DC-area snipers, etc. But it is nice to see references to current events in the meantime.

There are a handful of erotic pieces in this collection. Straightforward ones.

Dialectical Materialism was one of the strongest pieces until a disorienting 'plot twist' at the end. I missed how that fit in. Also particularly liked I Have News for You, Big Grab, and Plastic.

Random bits:

"the flounce of a pedigreed blonde"

"The middle aged man
who cannot make love to his wife
with the erectile authority of yesteryear"

Visiting his dying father:
"For that occasion, I had carefully prepared
a suitcase full of small talk"½

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty by Tony Hoagland is his first collection of poems in 10 years, according to the Graywolf representative at the expo. The collection features poems that call into question the realities of the modern world from our dating rituals to our trips to the mall food court.

In “Big Grab,” Hoagland suggests language is taking on meanings that are less than they are. “The Big Grab,/so the concept of Big is quietly modified/to mean More Or Less Large, or Only Slightly/Less Big than Before.// Confucius said this would happen –/that language would be hijacked and twisted/” (page 5). This collection not only tackles the language changes our society faces and what those changes mean, but it also looks carefully at the world of celebrity in “Poor Britney Spears.”

Read the review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2010/07/unincorporated-persons-in-the-late-honda-dyn...

A fabulous book for anyone interested in modern poetry. It's argumentative, intelligent, passionate, entertaining and very, very well-written. Each of the essays is his personal take on some aspect of poetry and/or poetics, and if you think that sounds dry then all I can say is go and get a copy: see for yourself.

It's full of laugh-out-loud moments of description – how do you go past things like “metaphor … is the raw uranium of poetry”, or “Fashion is the way that taste changes and then spreads, a kind of swell or wave of admiration”? (Not to mention the final essay, where he suggests that post-modernism has a passive-aggressive attitude to poetry in general and meaning in particular …) But what else would you expect from someone who published a collection with the mischievous title What Narcissism Means to Me?

I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you are at all interested in modern poetry, or even non-modern poetry, give Hoagland a try. (You can even read the final essay in the book online at the Poetry Foundation website.) You won't always agree with him, possibly not even follow some of his arguments. But there's something deeply enjoyable about following a restless intelligence through examinations of the subject of its passion.

There are lots of books on poetics that are intelligent – lectures full of well-made points and lots of insight. Worthwhile, but somehow not especially compelling. You'll go along, but probably not to all of them. (Especially not if you can get someone else to lend you their notes.) Worthy, informative, but somehow bloodless. Dispassionate. But this book is different. This is the tutor who makes the class forget what time the session is meant to finish, or who continues the discussion with all of you at the pub later. This is the tutorial you wouldn't miss even with a force ten hangover.½

My plan was to read a couple poems per day or per week or something, but I ended up going through the entire book in one sitting. It was like eating chips. Not entirely surprising, because the same thing happened when I read his What Narcissism Means to Me, which came five years after this one. I did not, however, have the immediate compulsion to buy five more copies of this one and mail them to friends, like I did with Narcissism. Nothing in this collection grabbed me in quite the same way as, say, A Color of the Sky. But it was still very good. Edgier. Repeated themes of sex and parents instead of friends and identity. The best metaphors, as before, involved anthropomorphic trees.½

This was a great collection of poems, and one I'll come back to. Most are narrative poems with strong voices and fun touches of humor; I never got tired of the collection, and there are many poems here which I'd recommend. For anyone who wants some short entertaining poems to pass the time, enjoys or wants to explore contemporary poetry, or likes narrative poetry that tells a story and still leaves you with something to think about, I highly recommend these. I will say that a few of the poems are slightly risque, so it's probably not the collection you'd want to pass on to your teenage poet at home--at least not without reading it first, though I admit I would have soaked these up and loved them as a sixteen year old as much as I do now at twenty-eight.

A great book for any reader of contemporary poetry--I'd also recommend it for those who wish they could get into reading more poetry. Hoagland's hallmark snarky humor is a pleasure, his criticism brilliant, yet plainly stated, and the breadth of his knowledge of english-language poetry is astounding. The pieces on identifying elements or techniques in poetry are helpful even for an experienced writer or reader, and the pieces analyzing and comparing poets make useful companions to the poetry itself.

Several years ago I first read Tony Hoagland's Sweet Ruin as an undergraduate with poetic pretensions. That collection meant a great deal to me then, as did Donkey Gospel shortly thereafter. In the years since I've grown very tired of most contemporary poetry, which just seems to rehash the same navel-gazing material over and over and over again. The tone, the dogged interiority, you can just smell the cigarettes and bad coffee.

With a title like this one, you might think more of the same awaits. Not so. This book is by far the most developed of Hoagland's collections; his voice is more dynamic, more layered. A friend of mine used the word "shrewd," and I think that's a good choice. He has a sense of humor that reminds me in a way of Alfred Hitchcock's--dry, wry, precise. It's rare poets have a sense of humor about themselves or the world we're living in, and this quality of Hoagland's work is for me the most refreshing. He also has a way of handling life's quotidian simplicities without the usual self-important righteousness; he is very low-brow, and very unafraid. There's also an admirable humanity to Hoagland, in that his edginess doesn't mean he's unapproachable. A rare quality indeed.

Also the first book of poetry in a long time I was able to sit down and simply read straight through. Its four sections move along in an almost novelistic way. Highly recommended.

This book is only as good as the asshole who is reading it and who wants to be petted for being such a good asshole, for being quiet and doing nothing mean and admitting that it would be nice to be nice but oh fucking well, there's nothing to being an asshole so I'll just read these tony hoagland poems and think about it and go do the things that are perpetually being done.