Legend Of Light (Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry) [Paperback]

Bob Hicok (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1995 | Series: Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry

Hicoks poems have a kind of severity, a moral accuracy, that both chills and refreshes the spirit, along with a technical virtuosity intrinsic to the work. He writes of the mundane with a brio that speaks to the meaning of metaphysical: beyond the physical, into the realms of light.Carolyn Kizer, Pollak Prize Citation The Legend of Light is a vivid, quirky, and deeply human book.Thomas Lux Bob Hicoks poems go out looking for whats least, but they also keep their eye, in these failing days of our century, on the large view, The term used / is megalopolis. This vast expanse is his terrain, and the subject he ably studies there isus, it turns out; or what he calls the hearts jazz. He listens to that music most industriously.Albert Goldbarth Whether Hicok is considering the reflection of human faces in the Vietnam War Memorial or the elements of a Modern Prototype factory, he prompts an icy realization that we may have never seen the world as it truly is. But his resilient voice and consistent perspective is neither blaming nor didactic, and ultimately enlightening. From the shadowed corners into which we dare not look clearly, Hicok makes us witness and hero of The Legend of Light.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Memories often link umbiblically," Hicok says in "Memory," a poem that captures the unconsciousness of some remembered responses: his two childhood distastes ("siamese tortures") for the Road Runner and having to catch his father's "psychotic" knuckleball connect to ruminations about an innocent man's ineradicable memories of imprisonment after his release from jail. With unadorned directness, Hicok details quotidian events: he sees a mother strike her child in the car waiting next to his at an intersection, notes the woman's instantaneous regret which is expressed in a hug that holds that car in place long after the light changes and he drives on. Hicok's lines move quickly, depicting a vision that doesn't seem to miss a thing but is able to see surprising wholes made up of parts. This collection of accomplished, un-self-conscious work was selected for the 1995 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry by Carolyn Kizer.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

530 Lakewood
85
Aids
Alice Wakes At Two And Looks Out The Window
The Dead
Divorce
Dogfish Mother
Duke
Eight
Extreme Measures
Forecast
Front Porch, Listening
Ice Storm
In Her Hands
Inside
Killing
Learning Of It
Man Of The House
Memory
My Job As It Relates To Bruegel's
Neighbor
Nigger
A Night At Modern Prototype
Nurse
Ohmy
Prodigal
Random Events
Rearview Mirror
Rivera's Golden Gate Mural
The Shrine
Surgery
Ten Years Dry
Traffic Jam
Visiting The Wall
Voladores
Waiting
Weather
Your Daughter
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 100 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press (September 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299149145
• ISBN-13: 978-0299149147
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #999,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Banquet for the Soul, January 21, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Legend Of Light (Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry) (Paperback)

I have often read that literature is food for the mind. If that is so then poetry must be food for the soul and this book a feast for the spirit. Where literature deals with ideas, fantasies and the human condition, poetry deals with the emotions, the spirit; the very qualities that raise us above the lower animals (no comments from PETA, Please!).

Poetry reaches into each of us and touches that elemental being that many of us deny exists. The Legend of Light by Bob Hicok reaches in and not only touches but pokes, prods and grabs. This, his second book, is the result of winning the Felix Pollack Prize in Poetry administered by the University of Wisconsin.

His writing style is deceptively simple. He does not try to fry your brain cells with polysyllabic words or convoluted conceptual phrasings or make you tap a rythym. Instead he speaks to you using common vocabulary but painting such vivid imagery that your hackles rise and you shake to settle your fur.

Much of his work has a dark side or, rather, addresses the dark side we would rather ignore. Some poems are equipped with claws that dig into your heart and squeeze till tears come, tears not of pain but of empathy, of compassion. I could not finish his poem Visiting the Wall until the third attempt, his descriptive phrasing affecting me the same as if I had been there. I don't think Mr. Hicok was old enough to be a brother of mine from the 'Nam but he let me once again cry.

Another favorite of mine (actually, all but about two are favorites) is Surgery. If memory serves, this was written after his own surgery. If you have ever been undrer hte knife, you can feel as he speaks.
"Masked, they cut you, peel back
your skin for the legend of light
to enter your body. In this moment
they love you......."
In AIDS, Mr. Hicok manages to convey nothing of being a homosexual, a drug addict or a maligned lover; He does not rail at the injustice of it all. What he does very well is impart the feeling of loss, the joy of love, of needing and being needed. His poetry deals with the frustration of not being able to communicate these things, of being blocked out and locked in. In the end, as the narrator leaves home, his last thought was

But all I can think of
is that you love as you have to
and die the best you can.

In the end, that's all that any of us can hope for.

This slim volume (79 pages) has affected me more than most books I've read in the past year. Much of the work, as I said earlier, deals with the dark. The dark in us, the dark around us. From Neighbor, about a man living under the bridge to Dogfish Mother all are guaranteed to open the your spirit-eyes and make you feel again.

It has taken me most of a year to read, re-read digest and accept what he was trying to tell me. I understood and felt everything but I also had to accept it. I have at last and encourage all of you to do the same.

Thank you for joining me.
Joe Zucatti

0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Legend of Light, March 15, 2007

By 

Mark Keehnel - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Legend Of Light (Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry) (Paperback)

The book arrived in excellent condition within scheduled delivery time.

Thank you,

Francine Keehnel