Tony Hoagland | The Sun Magazine #2

Tony Hoagland

Tony Hoagland was the recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize and the James Laughlin Award. His poetry collections include Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, Recent Changes in the Vernacular, and What Narcissism Means to Me, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He died in 2018.

— From March 2019
Poetry

Message 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 2015
Poetry

Selected Poems

from “Song for Picking Up” | Every time that something falls / someone is consigned to pick it up.

May 2014
Poetry

Spanish 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 2013
Poetry

Selected 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 2013
Poetry

St. 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 2012
Poetry

Selected 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 2012
Poetry

Please 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
Poetry

Selected Poems

from “Summer Dusk” | I put in my goddamn hearing aid / in order to listen to a bird that sounds / like the side of a drinking glass / struck lightly by a fork

December 2010
Poetry

Lost Keys

Holding a black wire coat hanger in his hand, / bending a loop in the tip with a pair of pliers, / my neighbor Mr. Alvarado is walking down his drive

June 2010
Poetry

Selected Poems

from “Wasp” | Why should I have to deal with so-called human beings / when I can be up on the roof / hammering shingles harder than necessary

December 2009
Poetry

The Social Life Of Water

All water is a part of other water. / Cloud talks to lake; mist / speaks quietly to creek.

September 2009
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