Green Squall (Yale Series of Younger Poets) [Paperback]

Jay Hopler (Author), Louise Gluck (Author)

Book Description

Series: Yale Series of Younger Poets | Publication Date: April 19, 2006

Jay Hopler's Green Squall is the winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. As Louise Glück observes in her foreword, “Green Squall begins and ends in the garden”; however, Hopler’s gardens are not of the seasonal variety evoked by poets of the English lyric—his gardens flourish at lower, fiercer latitudes and in altogether different mindscapes. There is a darkness in Hopler’s work as deep and brutal as any in American poetry. Though his verbal extravagance and formal invention bring to mind Wallace Stevens’s tropical extrapolations, there lies beneath Green Squall’s lush tropical surfaces a terrifying world in which nightmare and celebration are indistinguishable, and hope is synonymous with despair.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Louise Glück's final selection as judge of the Yale Younger Poet's Prize, an alternately ecstatic and self-deprecating speaker measures himself against a ravishing and disinterested natural world that is sometimes a mirror, sometimes an unattainable aspiration. The dialogue in these 34 poems is mostly between the speaker and himself, allowing for pained self-negations: "...the first, long satisfied sigh of summer. / Satisfied-that can't be right; summer's never / Satisfied." Hopler's most beguiling lines have the surprisingly convincing turn of haiku and aphorism, though with a healthy dose of irony: "How disappointing it all is! / The lemon trees, the banyan trees, the sky- / How disappointing it all is." When other voices enter, they humiliate the speaker, as in "The Frustrated Angel": "That's mighty big talk, isn't it, Hopler-coming from a man who lives with his mother?" Redemption comes, however briefly, in the transcendent evocations of nature's power: "Where's the crash- / That climax of diamonds, that wild, yellow / Crash of sparks // the wind will use to set this field / on fire?" The best of these poems are truly stunning.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“The Yale Series of Younger Poets remains the most prestigious [poetry contest], and Hopler’s work is an excellent addition ….”—Library Journal

(Library Journal )

“The best of these poems are truly stunning.”—Publishers Weekly

(Publishers Weekly ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (April 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300114540
• ISBN-13: 978-0300114546
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #675,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Exterminating Angel, June 5, 2006

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Green Squall (Yale Series of Younger Poets) (Paperback)

He makes up new words when the old ones just aren't hitting the mark, such as his use of 'lizarding,' in the line "The grass was lizarding."

His idea of a garden is different than the traditional Marvell garden of poesy, for he's from Florida and the airs and breezes of the Caribbean are never far away. People there have different ideas of what to do with their leisure. In another poem he rebukes Wallace Stevens for writing poems about Florida based on only casual, nearly imaginary visits only. Lately there's been a lot of questioning Stevens, but rarely on grounds so amusing; not only amusing but absolutely challengeworthy. Those of us who think of Key West because we read a poem by Wallace Stevens have things absolutely wrong, and Hopler is a good corrective, for he makes Florida seem dreary, mother-ridden and squashed with overdetermination, more like a spiritually impassable kingdom of Middle Earth than Steven's exotic Martin Denny stereosphere of birds calling, rain splashing, tiki worshipping.

Rhythm of a very different sort haunts his lines; from repetition, the simplest of childs' tools, he builds the kind of music Harry Partch might have envied. Bukowski too: "There is a black fly drowning in that glass of beer./ There is a black fly drowning in that glass of beer." Not by beer alone but through simple loneliness and also, the mistakes of FEMA, do we drown like black flies. "The man with the beer is a fisherman,/ Small and gigantic/ / in his white rubber boots." Cunningly an allegory of race relations, the black and the white, is built up from a few small simple and sensual details, largely color and texture. Hopler takes on big themes, but delivers in small strokes, like a master barber giving you the shave of your life. He speaks of the light "one finds in baby pictures" and he nails it as "old/ and pale and hurt" thus closing the circle on an entire misspent life. As he says, the big things such as the death of one's father jolt one to life, but it's the small things from which we derive our misery. An angel beats and beats each of us until we learn to love the pain.

Once again Louise Gluck has pulled forth another winner from a long supply of winners.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable to read, May 25, 2006

By 

J. Russell "jennirussell" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Green Squall (Yale Series of Younger Poets) (Paperback)

I very much enjoyed this collection. The voice is intimate, compelling, authentic, feels honest, curious, and contemplative. I got the sense of isolation and doubt but the speaker is also sensitive, funny, and inquisitive, so the voice rarely drifts into complete nihilism. There are also moments of humor and self-mockery. I wouldn't say it's without any pretension, but those moments are usually buffered by humility or self-contempt. He uses repetition in fresh ways and it becomes a formal device but never monotonous--not only repeating lines and phrases, but images are repeated, symbols, landscapes. It makes for a nice feeling of progression in the book. The poems take risks and sometimes they succeed as wildly and vividly as Lowell in his most eccentric moments, for example in the poem "The Frustrated Angel." Other times (for me) it felt too much like a puzzle and not poetry, for example "Firecracker Catalogue," --although that may be more reflective of my own taste than of his talent, which is obvious. But even with the few poems that were not my cup of tea, I still thought this collection was potent and enjoyable. I would recommend it.

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars heartbreaking, March 31, 2006

By 

a reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Green Squall (Yale Series of Younger Poets) (Paperback)

The most remarkable debut collection I think I've ever read. Jay Hopler explores a vivid, plangent emotional terrain, wrestling out the difficulties of faith and love and longing with an elegance that re-imagines the expressive capacity of language. A well-deserved award-winner, a major talent.