The Legend of Light (Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry) - Hardcover

Hicok, Bob

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9780299149109: The Legend of Light (Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299149102 ISBN 13: 9780299149109

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr, 1995

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Hicoks poems have a kind of severity, a moral accuracy, that both chills and refreshes the spirit, along with a technical virtuosity intrinsic to the work. He writes of the mundane with a brio that speaks to the meaning of metaphysical: beyond the physical, into the realms of light.Carolyn Kizer, Pollak Prize Citation The Legend of Light is a vivid, quirky, and deeply human book.Thomas Lux Bob Hicoks poems go out looking for whats least, but they also keep their eye, in these failing days of our century, on the large view, The term used / is megalopolis. This vast expanse is his terrain, and the subject he ably studies there isus, it turns out; or what he calls the hearts jazz. He listens to that music most industriously.Albert Goldbarth Whether Hicok is considering the reflection of human faces in the Vietnam War Memorial or the elements of a Modern Prototype factory, he prompts an icy realization that we may have never seen the world as it truly is. But his resilient voice and consistent perspective is neither blaming nor didactic, and ultimately enlightening. From the shadowed corners into which we dare not look clearly, Hicok makes us witness and hero of The Legend of Light.

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About the Author:

Bob Hicok is the author of another collection of poems, Bearing Witness. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he is an automotive die designer and computer system administrator. His poetry has appeared in many literary publications, including Boulevard, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review.

From Publishers Weekly:

"Memories often link umbiblically," Hicok says in "Memory," a poem that captures the unconsciousness of some remembered responses: his two childhood distastes ("siamese tortures") for the Road Runner and having to catch his father's "psychotic" knuckleball connect to ruminations about an innocent man's ineradicable memories of imprisonment after his release from jail. With unadorned directness, Hicok details quotidian events: he sees a mother strike her child in the car waiting next to his at an intersection, notes the woman's instantaneous regret which is expressed in a hug that holds that car in place long after the light changes and he drives on. Hicok's lines move quickly, depicting a vision that doesn't seem to miss a thing but is able to see surprising wholes made up of parts. This collection of accomplished, un-self-conscious work was selected for the 1995 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry by Carolyn Kizer.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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