Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft [Paperback]

Tony Hoagland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 19, 2006

The anticipated first collection of essays by celebrated poet Tony Hoagland, author of What Narcissism Means to Me


Meanness, the very thing that is unforgivable in human social life, in poetry is thrilling and valuable. Why? Because the willingness to be offensive sets free the ruthless observer in all of us, the spiteful perceptive angel who sees and tells, unimpeded by nicety or second thoughts. There is truth-telling, and more, in meanness. --from "Negative Capability: How to Talk Mean and Influence People"

Tony Hoagland has won The Poetry Foundation's Mark Twain Award, recognizing a poet's contribution to humor in American poetry, and also the Folger Shakespeare Library's O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize, the only major award that honors a poet's excellence in teaching. Real Sofistikashun, from the title onward, uses Hoagland's signature abilities to entertain and instruct as he forages through central questions about how poems behave and how they are made.

In these taut, illuminating essays, Hoagland explores aspects of poetic craft--metaphor, tone, rhetorical and compositional strategies--with the vigorous, conversational style less of the scholar than of the serious enthusiast and practitioner. Real Sofistikashun is an exciting, humorous, and provocative collection of essays, as pleasurable a book as it is useful.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hoagland's third book of poetry, the flirtatiously-titled What Narcissism Means to Me (2005), established him as one of the smarter, and funnier, poets of his generation, well balanced between absurdity and confession; those strengths are on show in this first gathering of prose, which lands him midway between academic analysis and off-the-cuff observations on his art. Some pieces have appeared in journals as polemical essays. Others sound composed for the lecture hall, and none are simply book reviews. Instead, Hoagland offers strong opinions about such matters as the virtues of variable diction; the uses and limits of unconscious, intuitively inspired, metaphor (with particular reference to Larry Levis); and the origins of that nonnarrative, disjunctive form which Hoagland dubs "the skittery poem of our moment." Occasionally his remarks don't compute ("Tone is most visible when it is at an angle"); more often they will help many young writers. Hoagland (who teaches in the prestigious writing program at the University of Houston) uses recent poetry to illustrate most of his ideas-from much-laureled figures such as Louise Gluck and Robert Pinsky to such lesser known and slightly younger writers like Laura Kasischke and Jason Shinder. He works less as an advocate for particular poets and poems than as a teacher of poetic craft, at times recommending a focus on person, place and thing, and elsewhere advocating a remarkable, not-entirely-conscious mode of writing in which "language is energized, dilates, balloons, proliferates and begins to write us."
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Review

Generous, humane, and inoffensively learned. -- American Book Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (September 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555974554
• ISBN-13: 978-1555974558
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

TONY HOAGLAND is the author of three poetry collections, including What Narcissism Means to Me, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award. He teaches at the University of Houston.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a slow pleasure, October 25, 2006

By 

Mr. Richard K. Weems "emperor_weems" (Fair Lawn, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft (Paperback)

Tony Hoagland's poetry already hint subtly at his attention to detail and craft, so the depth to which he can explore the creation of poetry in these essays comes as no surprise. But while Hoagland can write with precision about the marriage of rhetoric, diction and image in poetry and analyze the minutiae of tone and its complexities, he still preserves a delight for the spontaneity of writing and promotes a certain kind of un-knowingness in the process of creation.

This last point is very refreshing to see, for the trap of the basic contradictory action of writing exposition about creative writing is often to dictate or at least suggest conscious focus on the complexities of writing poetry, and all too often essays about poetry writing become flat shells about a very multi-dimensional process. Hoagland resists the impulse to prescribe, if it ever comes to him at all, and instead celebrates the end effects of wonderful poetry. When he does discuss the creation of poetry, he is an advocate of student-mind and fresh outlooks and the ability to change and adapt, as he does in his essays about particular poets like Pinsky and Gluck. Hoagland also defines well the pleasures of schools like language poetry and its energetic playfulness, but identifies fairly where they fall short of being thoroughly satisfying.

But don't take all of this as an impression that the book is stuffy and overly academic. Hoagland maintains a sense of humor through this book, keeping his language accessible and familiar.

Though I sometimes quibbled with Hoagland's choices of poets worthy of very particular attention in their own essays, and in the end I was no more of a fan of the work of these poets than before his praise of them, this sequence of essays will be enlightening to those familiar with the art of poetry. Though this book may prove a little more difficult for those without as much experience already in the craft of poetry, it is worth a slow, deliberate read.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an impressive and invaluable contribution, December 8, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft (Paperback)

"Real Sofistikashun: Essays On Poetry And Craft" by Tony Hogland (who is the author of three published poetry collections and is the recipient of the Folger Shakespeare Library's O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize) is a compilation of essays in which he deftly explores the craft of writing poetry in a more conversational style than that commonly employed in traditional verse. Hogland addresses the use of metaphor, tone, rhetorical and compositional strategies in a thoroughly `reader friendly' manner that is as inherently fascinating as it is informed and informative. "Real Sofistikashun" is an impressive and invaluable contribution to personal, academic, and community library Literary Studies reference collections and the `Art of Poetry' supplemental reading lists.