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.
A Tribute To Tony Hoagland
By turns funny and sad, caustic and poignant, Tony’s poetry first appeared in The Sun in May of 2000, and he was a regular contributor for the past ten years. Though he frequently used humor to make his writing more accessible, he could still catch the reader off guard with a sudden shift in tone, ending a poem in a very different mood than where it began.
March 2019Nature Is Strong
Put a bald truck tire in the top of a cypress tree in Florida / and soon an osprey will arrive to build its roost / of sharp dry twigs and torn-up winter grass.
February 2019Selected Poems
— from “In The Beautiful Rain” | Hearing that old phrase “a good death,” / which I still don’t exactly understand, / I’ve decided I’ve already / had so many, I don’t need another.
December 2018The Cure For Racism Is Cancer
This strange country of cancer, it turns out, is the true democracy — one more real than the nation that lies outside these walls and more authentic than the lofty statements of politicians; a democracy more incontrovertible than platitudes or aspiration.
In the country of cancer everyone is simultaneously a have and a have-not. In this land no citizens are protected by property, job description, prestige, and pretensions; they are not even protected by their prejudices. Neither money nor education, greed nor ambition, can alter the facts. You are all simply cancer citizens, bargaining for more life.
September 2018Illness And Literature
In those cold rooms with the blue plastic chairs, / sometimes the human condition / is an old Texas redneck with a brushy mustache / reading a Louis L’Amour novel / while waiting for his chemotherapy
February 2018Selected Poems
— from “Better Than Expected” | Things were not as bad as I had thought. / The scrape in the fender of the rented car / could be hidden with a little white paint / before I returned it to the agency.
August 2017Birdhouse
Do you have a twenty-foot extension ladder? / Good. / Let’s get it out of the garage. / I want to put this birdhouse up on one of the evergreens / that stands off your back deck.
October 2016New Strategy
Instead of attacking one more foreign city, hammering it into rubble, / we adopt a new strategy and start bombing with money.
August 2016Opening Night
Because the widow of the arms manufacturer / loves to listen to concertos in the evening, / the city finally has an orchestra.
June 2016Cause Of Death: Fox News
Toward the end he sat on the back porch, / sweeping his binoculars back and forth / over the dry scrub-brush and arroyos, / certain he saw Mexicans
May 2016
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