A Childhood in the Milky Way: Becoming a Poet in Ohio (Ohio History and Culture) [Hardcover]

David Brendan Hopes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2001 | Series: Ohio History and Culture

Life's first question, and one left imperfectly answered throughout the days of most of us, is who am I?, with its corollaries, how did I get here? and what am I supposed to do now? A Childhood in the Milky Way is one man's approach to these mysteries. The answer, I am a poet, leads David Brendan Hopes into an exploration of what it means, in America, at the end of the twentieth century, to be a poet, to be a professional provider of visionary alternative to established reality. Furthermore, A Childhood in the Milky Way investigates what sort of poet it could have been who arose from the Industrial-soon to be post-Industrial-ethnically jumbled, socially troubled, aesthetically impoverished milieu of Akron, Ohio, in the late 50s and 60s, when the last thing on anybody's mind was poetry, and well-nigh the first thing was the compulsion not to be conspicuous. This book follows the way by which the author, conspicuous by nature, almost succeeds in disappearing into imaginary worlds of peculiar beauty, and behind the curtain of homegrown religious mysticism. Funny and dramatic by turns, A Childhood in the Milky Way delivers a view of a special childhood in one corner, at least, of that galaxy, where the going is rough and the people by turns rough, naive, fanciful, full of inarticulate desire, sometimes haunted by the voices of angels and of bards.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born and raised in Akron, Ohio, David Brendan Hopes now lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where he is Professor of Literature at the University of North Carolina and director of Urthona Press, the Black Swan Theater Company, and the Downtown School of the Arts. After completing his BA at Hiram College, Hopes earned an MA at Johns Hopkins University and an MA and Ph.D. at Syracuse University. His first book of poems, The Glacier's Daughters, won the Juniper Prize and the Saxifrage Prize. He has published a nonfiction book, A Sense of the Morning, and a second collection of poetry, Blood Rose.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 174 pages
• Publisher: University of Akron Press (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1884836453
• ISBN-13: 978-1884836459
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,041,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Hell of a Book!, January 28, 2000

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This review is from: A Childhood in the Milky Way: Becoming a Poet in Ohio (Ohio History and Culture) (Hardcover)

Since I have been a friend of the author, it provided some clues for me as to the origins of his unique personality, but likewise obscured (or referred obliquely) to some of his more curious and no doubt equally fundamental traits. Perhaps contrary to his central premise, the book demonstrates that artists are either born to insight, aloofness, solitude, singularity, uniqueness (take your pick) or, at least, become that way before they are aware of it. Hopes seems to have been a poet from his earliest memory, and it has influenced everything since; I would not credit or fault Akron, Ohio, nor would I invoke the holy spirit. No doubt that spirit (in whatever denomination) exists in all artists. As a result, I viewed the book as a special insight on what it means to Hopes to have been a poet growing up in a fairly unartistic community. I am glad to say Hopes did not bemoan any difficulties he must have experienced as a child in Akron, but instead shows us how his insights developed and were nurtured and tuned.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mystic and a poet in his boyhood., June 22, 1999

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This review is from: A Childhood in the Milky Way: Becoming a Poet in Ohio (Ohio History and Culture) (Hardcover)

Hopes slices through his particular, peculiar boyhood down to a quirky, abyssal holiness in Akron, of all places, in the shadows of the rubber industry and a mile high glacier. He transforms Goodyear Heights Metropolitan Park into his "Maytree," a real madeup place where the Mother of Turtles lived and his sister became the Red Dancer, defiance herself rising and wheeling in the bitter rain. Here are the beginnings of a poet and a fierce worshipper of the things of a world most of us do not see, a glimpse of which he brings forth for us here. His prose is slick and quick as a slim-jim. He opens doors to places most of us never knew were there.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the beautifully written memoir of a poet., May 22, 1999

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Gary Arms (Dubuque, IA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Childhood in the Milky Way: Becoming a Poet in Ohio (Ohio History and Culture) (Paperback)

This book is a moving, remarkably eloquent memoir, an extended autobiographical essay that describes the author, the poet David Hopes. It is so beautifully written that it is almost a kind of poem. Highly recommended!