Soon After Rain

by Hoggard, James

• ISBN13: 9781609404284
• ISBN10: 1609404289
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-03-01
• Publisher: Wings Press

Summary

James Hoggard’s new collection of poems is an elegant, highly energetic volume that takes its readers through a wealth of settings, times, and forms. As versatile a poet as there is, Hoggard time and again turns his attention to forms like pantoum and ghazals that heighten the readers’ responses to the stories he tells in verse. In fact, one of the signal pieces in the volume shows Hoggard unearthing an old story about Odysseus’ trying through a wealth of trickery to get out of going to the Trojan War. What the tale adds up to, however, is a deeply moving love story that seems genuinely contemporary. Running throughout this collection is a powerful use of environmental collapse as both theme and metaphor.

Author Biography

James Hoggard is a translator, a playwright, a novelist, an essayist, and a poet whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Arts & Letters, Harvard Review, and Words Without Borders. He is the recipient of the Lon Tinkle Award for Excellence Sustained Throughout a Career, a poet laureate of Texas, and the former president of the Texas Institute of Letters. He is the Perkins-Prothro Distinguished Professor of English at Midwestern State University and the author of more than 20 books, including The Devil's Fingers & Other Personal Essays, The Mayor's Daughter, Riding the Wind, Triangles of Light: The Edward Hopper Poems, Trotter Ross, and Wearing the River. He lives in Wichita Falls, Texas.