Tonight: Tony Hoagland At McMurry
Award-winning poet and University of Houston prof Tony Hoagland will be on the campus of McMurry U. this Thursday and Friday, March 25-26.
Take our word for it. This guy is good. [See sample poem below]
Hoagland’s books of poetry are consistently personal and satirical, digging deep into the underbelly of the contemporary American dream. Defying expectations of what is “polite” enough to be poetry, Hoagland is to American poetry what a great Indie band is to the cookie cutter streaming of mainstream pop. This is a witty poet with an ironic edge, the sort of man who would entitle his third volume of poems What Narcissism Means to Me and write poems such as “Fred Had Watched a Lot of Kung Fu Episodes,” “Poem in Which I Make the Mistake of Comparing Billie Holiday to a Cosmic Washerwoman,” and “Hate Hotel.”
So what’s not to like? Head over to McMurry for the following free events:
Thurs., March 25 3 p.m. – Discussion on the craft of writing poetry (Garrison Campus Center Chapel)
Thurs., March 25 7:30 p.m. – Poetry Reading (Ryan Recital Hall: in Fine Arts Center fronting Sayles on south side of campus)
Friday, March 26 9 a.m. – Lecture: “Clown and Scalpel: The Poem as Social Critique” (Ryan Fine Arts Foyer)
Critics Say…
“It’s hard to imagine any aspect of contemporary American life that couldn’t make its way into the writing of Tony Hoagland or a word in common or formal usage he would shy away from. He is a poet of risk: he risks wild laughter in poems that are totally heartfelt, poems you want to read out loud to anyone who needs to know the score and even more so to those who think they know the score. The framework of his writing is immense, almost as large as the tarnished nation he wandered into under the star of poetry.” —Jackson Prize Citation
Sample Poem
A Color of the Sky
by Tony Hoagland
Tony Hoagland, “A Color of the Sky” from What Narcissism Means to Me. Copyright © 2003 by Tony Hoagland. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.
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