Hunger Wide as Heaven [Paperback]

Max Garland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2006

Hunger Wide as Heaven is a collection of poems by Max Garland, and is the winner of the 2005 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Competition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I'm a mad fan of the delicious, radiant poems of Max Garland. He even makes me feel closer to that old-time religion than I've felt in quite a while. There's a welcoming world here you'll recognize, as well as a wistfulness that feels perfectly pitched, leaning out to mystery. You can string his poems together in your mind, drape them from the door inside your head like a welcoming wreath, and you'll feel better walking through it." --Naomi Shihab Nye

"Max Garland finds, in 'the knottiness/of things' -- wind, tree, bird, sky, water, light, a father's milk truck, a mother's perfume -- a music of resilience, and grace. Simultaneously elegy and celebration, these poems explore themes of time and mortality, God and faith, memory and redemption, with a meditative serenity and urgency, in an affectionate accessible voice. For Garland, poetry is 'a way to speak a loss away,' to embrace, in emptiness, strength; in diminishment, desire; in loss, recovery; in hunger wide as heaven, the possiblity, at least, of fulfillment. This is a beautiful, beautiful book." --Ronald Wallace

"Kentucky bred, fed from 'the faint blue source' of dawning TV 'the waning days of Methodism'-- for grassroots American melancholy. Max Garland is the pure tobacco: free of poetic fashions, the wind in the linden his muse, surprised by the light that has traveled so far to find his transparent self on the dark glass of a hotel window, 'a man still / in the midst of transmission', through which our transient world can be seen. " --Eleanor Wilner

About the Author

Max Garland was born and grew up in western Kentucky, and is the author of a previous book of poems, The Postal Confessions, from the University of Massachusetts Press. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Georgia Review, Best American Short Stories, and other journals and anthologies. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bush Foundation, the James Michener Foundation, and the Wisconsin Arts Board. He now lives and teaches in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Cleveland State University Poetry Center (March 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880834693
• ISBN-13: 978-1880834695
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,312,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful dreamer, July 9, 2006

By 

reader (boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hunger Wide as Heaven (Paperback)

this book is gorgeous. if i were god, i'd choose max garland as my biographer.

5.0 out of 5 stars Max Garland is back!, April 25, 2006

By 

Marilyn Peretti "Marilyn Peretti" (Glen Ellyn, IL) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hunger Wide as Heaven (Paperback)

Finally! A second poetry book by Max Garland. Here is a lovely new collection, with some of the perfect poems from his last chapbook, Apparition, and charming new ones such as "Last Day", and "It Gets To Me". These lines circle 'round and 'round to complete fresh ideas of the heart, longing. "But this one, the daylit moon,.......seems as far away as love / when most of love is missing, / and the rest is barely moving." Startling favorites of mine are: "Hold On Me", "The Loon", and "You Miss It". Max weaves into unexpected words his childhood, everydayness, and lost love. What more could one want from poems for 2006!