Hollywood & God

Robert Polito is president of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. He is the author of Doubles, also published by the University of Chicago Press. He was director of the New School Graduate Writing Program, and he received the National Book Critics Circle Award for his biography of novelist Jim Thompson, Savage Art.

"Hollywood & God could have been called American Dirt; it could have been called Wrong Turns. A reader will find his or her own titles, because almost everything here-'Riding with the King' picking up Huckleberry Finn, 'Overheard in the Love Hotel' summoning Elvis Presley, 'The Great Awakening' calling Jonathan Edwards up on stage with T. D. Rice-is emblematic. Emblematic, but also whispering, as if to say, 'First impressions are always wrong.' This is a book full of people hiding behind their own names: a book of surprises." (Greil Marcus) "Split between oddly angled bits of memoir and acts of Hollywood ventriloquy, this second poetry collection from Robert Polito leaps between essays and lyrics, between theology and violence, between tell-alls and persona poems.... Three personal essays anchor the poems, each a story about interrogating self and god, whether fallen, falling apart, or missing altogether." (Publishers Weekly)"