About
Public Poetry, Kevin Walzer's meditations on poetry, publishing, business, and other creative pursuits
Your Host
Kevin Walzer, a poet, poetry publisher, husband, and father.
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Get a syndicated feed of my weblog.
Archives
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
Categories
Books
Business
Poetry
Publishing
Tue, 31 Jul 2007
Book of the Day: The Journey of Hands by Hank Hudepohl
The fluid poems of Hank Hudepohl's The Journey of Hands are full of surprises. Hudepohl is especially skillful at a sharp turn of perception or phrase, so that the world we thought we knew is suddenly viewed in a different light.
Consider "Burial Grounds":
Burial Grounds
Beyond the gate, headstones: angular
and pale against a backdrop of leafshade,
jutting up out of uneven, mossy ground
in skewed angles, sunlit gray. Pines taller
than oaks border the fence, and inside,
brown needles fleck the graves. Chiseled
on the stones, two names: Clay and Hatfield.
My grandpa walks off to the far end
and looks up into a bewilderment of trees.
"This place has calm," he says,
one hand in his denim jacket, the other resting
on the holster of a gun. He says it almost
to himself, as if he is showing me
where to bury him. I don't answer:
I am studying the faces in the graves.
The poem, like the place it describes, has a sense of calm, but underneath the commonplace surface are faces, hidden, undiscovered.