Full Description
Tony Hoagland's poems interrogate human nature and contemporary culture with an intimate and wild urgency, located somewhere between outrage, stand-up comedy, and grief. His new poems are no less observant of the human and the worldly, no less sceptical, and no less amusing, but they have drifted toward the greater depths of open emotion. Over six collections, Hoagland's poetry has become bigger, more tender, and more encompassing. The poems in Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God turn his clear-eyed vision toward the hidden spaces - and spaciousness - in the human predicament. Tony Hoagland's poems poke and provoke at the same time as they entertain and delight. He is American poetry's hilarious 'high priest of irony', a wisecracker and a risk-taker whose disarming humour, self-scathing and tenderness are all fuelled by an aggressive moral intelligence. He pushes the poem not just to its limits but over the edge. This UK edition of Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God also includes additional poems from another recent US collection of his poetry, Recent Changes in the Vernacular (2017).
Contents
I
13 Entangle
15 A Walk around the Property
16 The Romance of the Tree
17 Happy and Free
18 Which Would You Prefer, a Story or an Explanation?
19 Nobility
20 No Thank You
22 Proof of Life
23 Distant Regard
25 Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God
II
29 In the Waiting Room with Leonard Cohen
31 Ten Questions for the New Age
33 Ten Reasons We Cannot Seem to Make Progress
34 Epistle of Momentary Generosity
35 A Short History of Modern Art
37 Theater Piece
39 Couture
40 An Ordinary Night in Athens, Ohio
41 Inexhaustible Resource
42 Achilles
43 Examples of Justice
44 Better Than Expected
III
47 The Truth
48 Frog Song
49 Scotch Tape
50 Playboy
52 Dinner Guest·
53 Rain-father
55 Moment in the Conversation
57 Marriage Song
58 Trying to Keep You Happy ·
59 Taking My Medicine
60 The Third Dimension
62 The Classics
IV
65 Upward
67 Good People
69 Cause of Death: Fox News
71 Real Estate
72 Legend ·
73 Data Rain
74 Confusion of Privilege
75 Hope
76 I Have Good News
78 Into the Mystery
V from RECENT CHANGES IN THE VERNACULAR
81 Questions of Influence
83 What They Told Me at the Boys' Club in Gainesville
85 Noon at the Gym
86 The Age of Iron
88 Maybe a Hero Is Crossing the Mountains
90 Ken, Don't Go to Meet the Ex-Girlfriend
92 Butter
94 Empire
