Hold - Softcover

Hicok, Bob

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556595441 ISBN 13: 9781556595448

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press, 2018

Synopsis

"Bob Hicok is a spectrum... I’d love to see an MRI of his brain while he’s writing, as the neurons show us what’s possible, how a human can be a thought leader, taking us into the future... Hicok interrogates the world with mercy and wit and style and intelligence and modest swag. He’s one of America’s favorites―and to make the reader want to share the poet’s reality fulfills poetry’s finest aspiration." ―Washington Independent Review of Books

"In his ninth collection, Hicok navigates a world bereft of empathy and kindness, leading by example with a charm and emotional intelligence that speaks to a deep insight into the human condition... Mixing cleverness with tenderness, Hicok demonstrates how to be a beacon of light in the darkest of settings." ―Publishers Weekly

Bob Hicok’s tenth collection of poetry, Hold, moves nimbly between childlike revelry and serious introspection. While confronting the rampant hypocrisies of the American collective unconscious, Hicok is guided by his deep and tender sense of whimsy and humility. Pointing to the natural world as a mirror through which to rediscover human beauty, he pauses to unapologetically celebrate the wonder of living at all.

From "About the size of it":

. . . my breath
shuttling in and out, as if it can’ t decide
between stay and go, the little bird
long gone by the time I realize
the sun has set and it will soon feel
like my father was never here, which is no big deal
compared to the erasures the world endures
and offers every day, except this one is mine

Bob Hicok teaches at Virginia Tech University and is the author of ten collections, including Animal Soul, This Clumsy Living , Elegy Owed, and Sex & Love &. He is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, respectively.

About this title

About the Author:

Bob Hicok is the author of ten collections, including Animal Soul, This Clumsy Living, Elegy Owed, Sex & Love &, and Hold. He is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim. Currently, Hicok teaches at Virginia Tech University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Verve is to élan what kissing is to kissing longer
Unto my soul, I wear a crown of Legos
you can’t see.
I am the king of doing wheelies
on the Stingray bicycle of my mind
while breaking rocks beside you
and every other convict
in sales. Sure, what kind of royalty
burps root beer out his nose?
I understand how far I am
from the example Darth Vader set
by blowing up planets
to teach the universe who’s boss.
Light is boss, which makes god
Employee of the Month
every month. Every second,
a little less than a second passes
if I go fast enough downhill,
so technically I’m always
in bonus time. What’s that old saying --
you have to break a lot of eggs
against your forehead to make
the most stubborn child laugh.
I’m taking the tree swing at face value
as the only currency
the afterworld will accept
and holding on to my yippees
until they’re vintage or classic
or whatever the hip nomenclature is
among the avant-guardians,
the guys and gals who are part of team
Black Hole. I’m part of team
Yes You Can Divide by Zero. It’s messy,
but so are the best burritos
and the best sex
while eating burritos
and running with scissors
is the only way to make danger understand
that whatever point it’s trying to make,
I’m only three-eights listening
Twenty-three percent of the time
and won’t be its minion
or sock puppet. The rest is gravy
if it’s mashed potatoes day.
By my watch, it’s quarter past
let’s get on with singing the tuba parts
if we have to, if not all of the muses
can come out to play.
There are two of us here
and that’s a quorum
if one lights the match
and one seconds the motion.
Throwing a life line
Say you're a professor and one of your students
shot and killed thirty three people.
Say it's years later. Fall's begun and kids
have that eager look of tulips in their faces,
of green life pushing up from the ground
toward sun. In the smile of one passing,
you see the joy of one who passed,
one of the thirty three and follow her
with your imagination. You give her life
in a poem by having her run along a beach,
her children behind her and their grandparents
behind them, everyone wanting dinner,
everyone wanting stars to come out
and be their silly, shiny selves, everyone wanting
that next little breath. But let me ask --
are you drinking again? Have you driven your car
into a tree? Do you have a hurricane
for a heart? Do you wake on the wrong side
of the bed -- the bottom, not the top?
Say you're so desperate for gun-control
that you're thinking of appealing to conservatives
by suggesting that murder is abortion
when one considers the children this woman
was likely to have had, the children
you just gave her in your poem
but are in danger of killing
if you let your anger take that political turn.
Don't do it. Don't you see that poems
make horrible legislation and even worse
bullet-proof vests, so brittle
and thin-skinned? Just let her live.
Let her run with the kite of her children
behind her. That's what I'd do
if I were you. And the drinking.
The driving into trees. I'd do those too.
I'd drink and crash and write one poem
for every day of her life. Hell. I'd drink more
and crash better and write two.
Why not
Kids. They think everything is possible
to order on pizza. Extra moon. Cat hair. The ideas
of Jean Jacques Rousseau. One of the species
came by my office the other day to tell me
she'd decided to walk to Peru. She was so happy
to have a heart and legs that I was reminded
of otters spinning in water but didn't tell her
that her mood had this aquatic zest, it was enough
to be splashed by the joy of her intention.
The razor cuts on her left arm were as orderly
but more scabbed over than the pickets
of every fence I wish I could still jump
simply by deciding to do so. I thought,
as the more adult-shaped person in the room,
I should ask important questions, like how many
pairs of shoes do you think Gandhi had
and is there a way to incentivize good will
and what t-shirt would you bring back from the dead
if you could, mine was blue and made
from the actual Aegean. Most of us
get about six minutes to believe
we can walk through flames. I checked
and the faculty handbook requires
in such moments that I say, Why stop at Peru
or ever, why not levitate, maybe there's a piccolo
inside you waiting to get out. While I look appalling
in the uniform, cheerleading's the calling
that's called for in nine out of ten head-on
collisions with the truth, otherwise life's a lot
of library fines and chemo and shawarma
with beef when you ordered the chicken. Peru.
Rhymes with Camus. Lee Ann Rimes
with "can too." The good days, I wonder
how much zoom I have left in my bones.
The bad days, I know.
The impulse: to hold
This. This greenest green. Green of this forest,
this second, of electron transfer reactions
in thylakoid membranes. Green from Old English
growan, to grow. Green of the heart chakra,
of leaves richer than money. I look up
from a hoe, a stove, from words I've read
so many times they've erased my eyes, look up
and know: every green after this green
is less so. Less sun-addled and sentient
and kind. Did you know hemoglobin
and chlorophyll have similar structures?
That we're almost trees
almost being us. O hyperemerald cousins.
O o. This minute, this fingersnap,
this wavelength of five hundred
and seventy nanometers. I look up
from my subatomic dismemberment
and feel summer's about to lose
its swashbuckle, its shine, become hang-dog,
self-referential, blind.
Green of the tipping point
between the world being drinkable
and the world being dry. This instant
sheened by thriving. Doe-shy. Startled.
Gone as soon as I'm thrilled it's here.
This luck. This wish. This life.

About this edition

• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1556595441
• ISBN 13: 9781556595448
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88