Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty: Poems [Paperback]

Tony Hoagland (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 2, 2010

The new poetry collection by Tony Hoagland, the award-winning author of What Narcissim Means To Me and Donkey Gospel

In Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, Tony Hoagland is deep inside a republic that no longer offers reliable signage, in which comfort and suffering are intimately entwined, and whose citizens gasp for oxygen without knowing why. With Hoagland’s trademark humor and social commentary, these poems are exhilarating for their fierce moral curiosity, their desire to name the truth, and their celebration of the resilience of human nature.

Editorial Reviews

Review

I too am made of joists and stanchions, of plasterboard and temperamental steel, mortgage payments and severed index fingers, ex-girlfriends and secret Kool-Aid-flavored dawns. —from “Demolition”

 

“It’s hard to imagine any aspect of contemporary American life that couldn’t make its way into the writing of Tony Hoagland or a word in common or formal usage he would shy away from. He is a poet of risk: he risks wild laughter in poems that are totally heartfelt, poems you want to read out loud to anyone who needs to know the score and even more so to those who think they know the score. The framework of his writing is immense, almost as large as the tarnished nation he wandered into under the star of poetry.” —Jackson Poetry Prize judges’ citation

About the Author

Tony Hoagland is the author of three previous poetry collections, including What Narcissism Means to Me and Donkey Gospel, and a collection of essays, Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft. He teaches at the University of Houston.

Product Details

• Paperback: 100 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press; 2010 edition (February 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555975496
• ISBN-13: 978-1555975494
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #182,914 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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars New and vintage poems to blow you away March 9, 2010

By Adair Rowland

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Ever since discovering "What Narcissism Means to Me" in 2004, I've hungered for the "Tony take" on everything from millennial materialism to awakening from illness. Very personal, very social, uncanny marksmanship in his imagery, Hoagland makes me remember what poetry can do beyond any other medium. Open this collection anywhere, read aloud, and watch if you don't say "Whoa!" as what just happened sinks in.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars America's Mid-Life Crisis May 2, 2010

By Melissa Slachetka

Format:Paperback

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty is a colorful and contradictory view of America. The poems are a filled with musings on the century we are living in and the dynamics of love and life.

Tony Hoagland's verses seem to ask if we are just bold adventurers claiming a new democratic royalty or is our empire full of rust spots and loud mufflers as is cruises through a country covered in peeling billboards and half-drunk soda cans and is there any difference?

There is nice coherence to this book of poetry. Intended or not, the table of contents even reads like a list poem, where each title conveys a conversation of emotions set in stanzas. This book has unique potential, from the catchy title to the spirited verses.

Still, there is awkwardness in Hoagland's prose. It isn't clumsy in language or structure, but in its ability to express. Using broad phrases like "for a while the problem got very clear, and the clarity constituted a kind of relief, as if the problem had withdrawn. . . But after a while the clarity began to fade" which don't actually say much of anything are a major hazard. Something is missing in this vagueness and it feels like we are left out of a secret joke known only to the writer, making it hard for the reader to fully commit to the work and get lost in the poet's world.

Another detractor is when the author addresses the poem directly, as in the following bits: "they are excited to be entering the poem" and "I wanted to get the cement truck into the poem" or "I liked the idea of my poem having room inside." This self-praising just feels unnecessary. The truth is - it seems like Hoagland, himself, is working through a mid-life crisis.

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty is an introspective look at ourselves and the country we live in. Hoagland's home-spun soliloquies on American life are both clever and pensive.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A siren call to remember the most valuable aspects of day-to-day life February 13, 2010

By Midwest Book Review

Format:Paperback

The fourth poetry collection by University of Houston teacher Tony Hoagland, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty is an anthology of free-verse spinning a tongue-in-cheek parable of modern American life. A siren call to remember the most valuable aspects of day-to-day life - aspects that are tied to humanity and community rather than wealth or power. Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty is ultimately a reminder that it is better to be personally "unincorporated". "Voyage": I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages / and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage: / sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas / and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on // in a novel without a moral but one in which / all the characters who died in the middle chapters / make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.