Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty: Poems
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