The Precincts of Paradise [Paperback]

Allen Hoey (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 108 pages
• Publisher: WordTech Communications (October 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933456108
• ISBN-13: 978-1933456102
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,556,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Allen Hoey has published six collections of poems and three novels; Once Upon a Time at Blanche's is most recent collection of poems. His 2008 collection of poems, Country Music, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prise. His other books include A Fire in the Cold House of Being (selected by Galway Kinnell for the 1985 Camden Poetry Award), What Persists, Provencal Light & Other Poems, and The Precincts of Paradise, all poetry collections, and Chasing the Dragon: A Novel about Jazz, Voices Beyond the Dead, and On the Demon's Trail, a mystery. His poems and reviews have appeared in numerous journals, among them The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The Hudson Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, and The Southern Review. His poem "A Thousand Prostrations" was included in Essential Zen (HarperCollins) and another poem, "Essay on Snow," was included in The Best American Spiritual Writing of 2004 (Houghton Mifflin). In 1993 he accepted the Precepts as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist. He was 2001 Bucks County Poet Laureate and currently serves as Director of the Bucks County Poet Laureate Program. He received a 2002 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship. He lives in an 18th century stone cottage on an old horse farm with a view of Bowman's Hill.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dance with the Serpent, April 10, 2006

By 

George Drew (Poestenkill, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Precincts of Paradise (Paperback)

Allen Hoey's The Precincts of Paradise is one of those books of poetry that takes your breath away. In language that is sometimes cool and exact and sometimes super-heated to a conflagration of syntax and rhythmic diction, the poems, one after the other, wealth piled on wealth, plumb both the things of this world and the things exchanged and left behind, or, more precisely, buried within, just this side of a Paradise remembered so acutely it hurts. Literally, many of these poems have been hurt into being, which is to say, the poet has been hurt into poetry---a poetry of the first rank. Whether lyric or dramatic, we are left with what we have lost, and with what we have gained. Paradise always beckons, but so does what is most human, there---in the precincts of Paradise. Dance with the serpent: read this book.