Desolation: Souvenir

Paul Hoover is the editor of the influential anthology Postmodern American Poetry, co-editor of the literary magazine New American Writing, and author of nine previous poetry collections. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

"In the two long poems that make up Desolation: Souvenir , Paul Hoover unravels the edges of empirical knowledge... What's so moving in this book is the lucidity with which Hoover takes on matters that can't be resolved or reclaimed." --Elizabeth Robinson, author, Harrow and Three Novels "Two poems, one grounded in Mallarme's deeply moving elegiac fragments for his young son, the other a now playful, now serious riff on Wittgenstein's propositions. The former notably expands our sense of elegy's range and its various tones. The latter illuminates the richly exploratory and ever surprising thrust of poetic logic--or is it antilogic--as it engages with seas and selves and worlds. Together they offer seamlessly paired instances of Paul Hoover's always impressive field of poetic invention." --Michael Palmer, award-winning poet, Company of Moths "The comfortable tone of the aphorism gets cracked open in these dense truisms as they all go slightly off-kilter, careening quietly into brand new territory. Interweaving elements of radically different tenors--hypnotic rhythm, sharp observation, elegiac impulse--Hoover's brilliant stanzas and one-liners are moving constellations presenting the raw materials of the world in constantly shifting and illuminating relations. Throughout, thinking and feeling egg each other on; the result is a simply stunning book, both deeply wise and extremely moving." --Cole Swensen, award-winning poet, Noon and Try "As the poems accrue, one realizes there's as much pleasure in noticing how this oracular voice makes wisdom of whatever it describes as there is in parsing its many sayings." -- Publishers Weekly (April 23, 2012)