From Publishers Weekly
Well-known for editing the Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry as well as the literary journal New American Writing, Hoover is also the author of five books of poems from which he here makes a cohesive selection, and adds new work. His aesthetic fuses the chatty observational wisdom of the New York School with a postmodern skepticism of linguistic transcendence ("intense bits/ of emotional/ baggage constant/ as genres"), which most often leads to a kind of familiar po-mo lament: "There's/ no 'new meaning.'/ Old words circle/ beyond our contriving." Unlike anything envisioned by the Romantics, this is a world "designed by Michael Jackson," where Madonna and the Serbs lure our attentions away from modernist texts like Finnegans WakeAwhich is to say, the poems are deeply informed by the culture wars inaugurated in the '80s. One Hoover response is to playfully rebel against the literature, whether recommending Conrad's Heart of Darkness after one's finished watching I Love Lucy or claiming to have "sat on the face of T.S. Eliot / and squirmed my butt around." In the new poems, Hoover seems to be looking for a way to articulate a more positivist poetic, whether it be through affirmative eros ("love's/ singular language/ has ten/ tongues") or beauty: "I listen all day/ to Miles Davis play,/ beautifully and/ clearly, 'So Near,/ So Far'." Whether or not Hoover finds a way out of the questions the poems ask, the questioning itself remains genuine and open-ended. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
After Miss Graven's Remarks
As Quietly As Distant
At The Music Box
At Unrest
Baseball
Boston To Chicago
By Their Love Are Grown Cosmographers
Canticus Narcissus
The Chinese Notebook
Clem's Farm
Compared To What
Desire
Family Romance
The Garden
Geometric Pressure
The German Version
Go Into Your Homes
Heart Of Darkness
Heart's Ease
Impossible Object
In A Shadow Gate
In A Suburb Of The Spirit
In The Landing Zone
In Which City
Industrial Lake, Indiana
Intolerant Conversation
It Never Existed. It Remains
Local Knowledge
Long History Of The Short Poem
Meyer Is A Bum
The Nature Poem
Night Of The Hunter
The Novel: 24
The Novel: 25
The Novel: 30
On History
The Orphanage Florist
Piano For Eighty-eight Hands
Poems We Can Understand
Red Lilies
Reflection's Edge
The School For Objects
Secret And A Theme
Somebody Talks A Lot
Stationary Journey
Sunlight In Vermont
Surface Gods
The System
Theoretical People
Totem And Shadow
Tribal Item
Trumpet Voluntary
Voices Off
We've Decided
Words My Daughter Asked For
Written In Juice Of Lemon
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
As Quietly As Distant
At The Music Box
At Unrest
Baseball
Boston To Chicago
By Their Love Are Grown Cosmographers
Canticus Narcissus
The Chinese Notebook
Clem's Farm
Compared To What
Desire
Family Romance
The Garden
Geometric Pressure
The German Version
Go Into Your Homes
Heart Of Darkness
Heart's Ease
Impossible Object
In A Shadow Gate
In A Suburb Of The Spirit
In The Landing Zone
In Which City
Industrial Lake, Indiana
Intolerant Conversation
It Never Existed. It Remains
Local Knowledge
Long History Of The Short Poem
Meyer Is A Bum
The Nature Poem
Night Of The Hunter
The Novel: 24
The Novel: 25
The Novel: 30
On History
The Orphanage Florist
Piano For Eighty-eight Hands
Poems We Can Understand
Red Lilies
Reflection's Edge
The School For Objects
Secret And A Theme
Somebody Talks A Lot
Stationary Journey
Sunlight In Vermont
Surface Gods
The System
Theoretical People
Totem And Shadow
Tribal Item
Trumpet Voluntary
Voices Off
We've Decided
Words My Daughter Asked For
Written In Juice Of Lemon
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
