Real Sofistikashun Essays on Poetry and Craft

by Hoagland, Tony

• ISBN13: 9781555974558
• ISBN10: 1555974554
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-19
• Publisher: Graywolf Press

Summary

Tony Hoagland has achieved rockstar status in the world of poetry. His ever-growing audience includes major fans from the literary world as well as musicians and radio talk show hosts. He was highlighted, along with Sigmund Freud and Bill Murray, as one of 29 "creative souls who make the year suck a little less" and Ani DiFranco reads one of his poems at every concert. In this first essay collection from one of the world's most successful contemporary poets, the art and craft of poetry is taken apart with a wrecking ball. Essays on the practice of poetry as well as the practices and work of actual poets chat gently with the reader over 300 pages of stimulating conversation with the Bono of the literary world.

Author Biography

TONY HOAGLAND is the author of three poetry collections, including What Narcissism Means to Me, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award. He teaches at the University of Houston.

Table of Contents

Altitudes, a Homemade Taxonomy Image, Diction, and Rhetoric	1	(20)
``'Tis Backed like a Weasel''
The Slipperiness of Metaphor	21	(12)
Three Tenors
Pinsky, Hass, Gluck, and the Deployment of Talent	33	(28)
Self-Consciousness	61	(46)
Two Roads Diverged
Character, Metaphor, and Destiny in the Poems of Matthews and Levis	69	(12)
Obsession
(``Are You Still Writing About Your Father?'')	81	(2)
Sad Anthropologists
The Dialectical Use of Tone	83	(24)
On Disproportion	107	(66)
Polka Dots, Stripes, and Plaids
Decorative Instincts and Compositional Strategies in Poetry	129	(16)
Fragment, Juxtaposition, and Completeness
Some Notes and Preferences	145	(18)
Thingitude and Causality
In Praise of Materialism	163	(10)
Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment	173	(20)
Fashion Victims
The Misfortunes of Aesthetic Fate	189	(4)
Negative Capability
How to Talk Mean and Influence People	193