The Hellbox (Oxford Poets)
by Greg Delanty
Category: Poetry

Greg Delanty grew up in a family of printers, and as a youth he worked in the composing room. A hellbox is the bin into which printers chucked broken or worn type, and the conceit that unites this collection is the technology, lore, and tradition of hot-metal printing. Here, the language of printing--literal and symbolic--inspires a series of moving and powerful poems. Delanty writes with an impetuous daring that combines controlled rhetoric with a vernacular tang, especially in the long title-poem, which describes his immigration to the United States and his attempt to deal with feelings of uprootedness in "the continuous sci-fi movie of our century."