Sweet Ruin (Brittingham Prize in Poetry)

Sweet Ruin (Brittingham Prize in Poetry)
by Tony Hoagland

Sweet Ruin (Brittingham Prize in Poetry)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Tony Hoagland
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-01-01
ISBN: 0299135845
Number of pages: 96
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780299135843
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of Sweet Ruin (Brittingham Prize in Poetry)

Book Review: The sweetness of Hoagland's 'Sweet Ruin'
Summary: 5 Stars

I cannot begin to tell you how I felt when, in 1994, I first read Hoagland's 'Sweet Ruin'-the language and the imagery just sparked a recognition in me in the midst of all the dozens of other poets and poetry.

It was a college workshop with a very well-known poet running it, and the text we were using was 'The New American Poets of the '90s' and I remember the professor seemed to be a bit amused at my choice when we were allowed to choose a favorite--all around were picking Robert Pinsky or Rita Dove (pretty big names in workshop circles, as I remember, and here was this complete--to me--unknown) and he asked me to read 'Sweet Ruin', and afterwards he said to me thoughtfully, scratching his bearded chin, that I'd heard Hoagland exactly right, the rhythms, everything. My favorite part, the end:

"I think there must be something wrong
with me, or wrong with strength, that I would
break my happiness apart
simply for the pleasure of the sound.
The sound the pieces make. What is wrong

with peace? I couldn't say.
But, sweet ruin, I can hear you.
There is always the desire.
Always the cloud, suddenly present
and willing to oblige."


I can't tell you what it was, but all these years later I always come back to this: the poem, the poet, the collection, and it still resonates for me in a way that nothing else ever has--as if he has explained me to me, but at the same time, made my excuses.

Summary of Sweet Ruin (Brittingham Prize in Poetry)

Tony Hoagland captures the recognizably American landscape of a man of his generation:  sex, friendship, rock and roll, cars, high optimism, and disillusion.  With what Robert Pinsky has called ?the saving vulgarity of American poetry,?  Hoagland?s small biographies of destruction reveal that defeat is a natural prelude to grace and loss a kind of threshold to freedom.

?A remarkable book.  Without any rhetorical straining, with a disarming witty directness, these poems manage to transform every subject they touch, from love to politics, reaching out from the local and the personal to place the largest issues in the context of feeling.  It?s hard to think of a recent book that succeeds with equal grace in fusing the truth-telling and the lyric impulse, clarity and song, in a way that produces such consistent pleasure and surprise.??Carl Dennis

?This is wonderful poetry:  exuberant, self-assured, instinct with wisdom and passion.??Carolyn Kizer

?There is a fine strong sense in these poems of real lives being lived in a real world.  This is something I greatly prize.  And it is all colored, sometimes brightly, by the poet?s own highly romantic vision of things, so that what we may think we already know ends up seeming rich and strange.??Donald Justice

?In Sweet Ruin, we?re banging along the Baja of our little American lives, spritzing truth from our lapels, elbowing our compadres, the Seven Deadly Sins.  Maybe we?re unhappy in a less than tragic way, but our ruin requires of us a love and understanding and loyalty just as deep and sweet as any tragic hero?s.  And it?s all the more poignant in a sad and funny way because the purpose of this forced spiritual march, Hoagland seems to be saying, is to leave ourselves behind.  Undoubtedly, you will recognize among the body count many of your selves.??Jack Myers

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