Description
Book SynopsisTony Hoagland's poems interrogate human nature and contemporary culture with an intimate and wild urgency, located somewhere between outrage, stand-up comedy, and grief. His new poems are no less observant of the human and the worldly, no less sceptical, and no less amusing, but they have drifted toward the greater depths of open emotion. Over six collections, Hoagland’s poetry has become bigger, more tender, and more encompassing. The poems in Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God turn his clear-eyed vision toward the hidden spaces – and spaciousness – in the human predicament. Tony Hoagland's poems poke and provoke at the same time as they entertain and delight. He is American poetry's hilarious 'high priest of irony', a wisecracker and a risk-taker whose disarming humour, self-scathing and tenderness are all fuelled by an aggressive moral intelligence. He pushes the poem not just to its limits but over the edge. This UK edition of Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God also includes additional poems from another recent US collection of his poetry, Recent Changes in the Vernacular (2017).
Trade ReviewThe writing is classic Hoagland: accessible and conversational, sometimes humorous, as he scrutinises everything from a book he's reading to mortality and the emotions that arise when he thinks of the music of Leonard Cohen while sitting in a hospital waiting room... The work raises important questions 'about the hazards of playing at innocence', why our culture can't seem to make progress and why no one seems to recognise the impending environmental crisis. * The Washington Post *
He belongs to that wagon-circle of American poets who believe in a "common reader"…Hoagland is a poet of a ragged, half-satirical, half-lyrical intensity. If Billy Collins is Updike, Hoagland is Salinger, or perhaps Holden Caulfield…making us think we know the ground we are on, then showing us that we don’t…For me, he not only pulls the rug from under my feet when it comes to the moral complacencies and platitudes that I don’t notice I live by, he does the same with my given poetic certainties. -- Henry Shukman * Poetry London *
Hilarious, searing poems that break your heart so fast you hardly notice you’re standing knee deep in a pool of implications. They are of this moment, right now – the present that we’re already homesick for. -- Marie Howe
Table of ContentsI 13 Entangle 15 A Walk around the Property 16 The Romance of the Tree 17 Happy and Free 18 Which Would You Prefer, a Story or an Explanation? 19 Nobility 20 No Thank You 22 Proof of Life 23 Distant Regard 25 Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God II 29 In the Waiting Room with Leonard Cohen 31 Ten Questions for the New Age 33 Ten Reasons We Cannot Seem to Make Progress 34 Epistle of Momentary Generosity 35 A Short History of Modern Art 37 Theater Piece 39 Couture 40 An Ordinary Night in Athens, Ohio 41 Inexhaustible Resource 42 Achilles 43 Examples of Justice 44 Better Than Expected III 47 The Truth 48 Frog Song 49 Scotch Tape 50 Playboy 52 Dinner Guest· 53 Rain-father 55 Moment in the Conversation 57 Marriage Song 58 Trying to Keep You Happy · 59 Taking My Medicine 60 The Third Dimension 62 The Classics IV 65 Upward 67 Good People 69 Cause of Death: Fox News 71 Real Estate 72 Legend · 73 Data Rain 74 Confusion of Privilege 75 Hope 76 I Have Good News 78 Into the Mystery V from RECENT CHANGES IN THE VERNACULAR 81 Questions of Influence 83 What They Told Me at the Boys’ Club in Gainesville 85 Noon at the Gym 86 The Age of Iron 88 Maybe a Hero Is Crossing the Mountains 90 Ken, Don’t Go to Meet the Ex-Girlfriend 92 Butter 94 Empire
