Tony Hoagland
Tony Hoagland’s most recent poetry collection is Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, and he is the founder of The Five Powers of Poetry, a seminar for high-school English teachers. His new book of prose, Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays, will be published in October.
The University Of Men
First Susan got engaged to an archeologist, / who took her to excavate dinosaur bones in Tibet. / At night in their double sleeping bag, / while he catalogued her body parts, / Suze discovered her inner Tibetan.
December 2015Selected Poems
— from “Good People” | On the way to the wedding of his friend, his car struck a dog, and he had no time to stop, / but he’s a good person.
October 2015Message To A Former Friend
I just wanted to write and say, / in case you are hit tomorrow by a truck / or are swept from the beach by a freak wave
August 2015Selected Poems
— from “Song for Picking Up” | Every time that something falls / someone is consigned to pick it up.
May 2014Spanish Ballad
That barista, Mother, / with the dark-roast eyes / and the silver nail / through her left eyebrow, / who pulls the handle / of the espresso machine / with such imperial ennui / — Mom, does she not know / that she is killing me?
December 2013Selected Poems
— from “Special Problems in Vocabulary” | There is no single particular noun / for the way a friendship, / stretched over time, grows thin, / then one day snaps with a popping sound.
November 2013St. Sebastian
First baseman / for the King James Bible Martyrs, / my favorite guy / in the whole New Testament, / all those arrows sticking out of him / like a pincushion.
June 2012Selected Poems
— from “The Best Moment of the Night” | You had a moment with the dog, / down near the base of the butcher-block table / just as the party was getting started.
April 2012Please Don’t
tell the flowers — they think / the sun loves them. / The grass is under the same / simple-minded impression / about the rain, the fog, the dew
September 2011
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