Hard Rain (The Hollyridge Press Chapbook Series)
by Tony Hoagland
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tony HoaglandEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-10-20
ISBN: 0977229823
Number of pages: 48
Publisher: Hollyridge Press
Book Reviews of Hard Rain (The Hollyridge Press Chapbook Series)
Book Review: The cover is the review
Summary: 5 Stars
I first came to Hoagland's poetry through his second book, Donkey Gospel. Very good stuff, I thought. I'll try some more. Sweet Ruin, Hoagland's first, may have been even better. I did not hesitate a year later to advance order number three, What Narcissism Means to Me. The opening poems are among his best, but then there seemed a drop off. The rest of the book wasn't that bad, wasn't that good, so I hesitated when Hard Rain said Buy me! Buy me! But I relented. I figured Hoagland had given me two and a half good books (most poetry volumes give you two and a half good POEMS, if you're lucky; you know it's true).
In Hard Rain Hoagland steps up to the next level. That's right, to major poet. He has NO chance of becoming our county's Poet Laureate; that's how great this chapbook is.
There are maybe two clinkers in the batch (I like where "Greed" is going; it just never gets there). When I read a volume of poetry, I mark the poems I'll want to return to. Usually a pencil lasts me a long time. Not here.
I'll teach "Allegory of the Temp Agence" in my Poetry: Peace and Social Justice course. And "Requests for Toy Piano." And "Summer," a brilliant and frighteningly beautiful example of Hoagland transmogifying news event (the D.C. sniper) into poem: "what will we do if the sniper chooses us tomorrow...each step has a slender string attached." "Operations" should be sent to the White House and to FOX news. But who would volunteer to read it to them, to stress properly "Operation Infinite Self-Indulgence" and how "we tied flags to the antennae of our cars/that snapped like fire when we drove"? And who among such listeners could survive a "naked room full of shadows and light"? Still, Hoagland makes it fun to imagine.
And Hard Rain is fun. Dark fun. Witness the title poem's letter to Dear Abby in which blood is ignored for presents, that is, until we are exposed as the bloodletters: "I used to think I was not a part of this...but that was just another song...taught to me since birth."
In his poetry Hoagland has always looked at himself honestly - often in ways that aren't flattering, never in ways that are sentimental. What Narcissism Means to Me started to pull the rest of us into the lab that is our America. Hard Rain conducts the tests; this is "our marvelous punishment." Hard Rain is Hoagland's marvelous present.
Summary of Hard Rain (The Hollyridge Press Chapbook Series)
New poetry from award-winning poet Tony Hoagland.Poetry Books
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