Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft Book

Sharp thinking, witty, smart writing about poetry ' and I suppose I like this writing because I seldom find myself disagreeing with the positions Hoagland stakes out vis-a-vis contemporary poetry. Highly readable -- you don't have to be a PhD lit critter -- & at the same time Hoagland contends with trends & movements a la mode & draws you into the debates.

He's a big tent -- liking many kinds of poetry, I think, not dogmatic, and these essays represent a mind struggling with the current moment of abundance in styles and thinking about poetry that pushes readers to deal with it.

Hoagland comes down in favor of work that engages experience with wit and creativity, the hero here is freedom of the mind, imagination, but also in touch with Earth, and that's how it should be (Hey, listen to me -- ha-ha!).

Reading this book, for me, is like being in a grad student seminar on contemporary poetry with a smart, conversationally adept teacher. He makes me think about things I mostly haven't thought about, not with any kind of clarity anyway . . .

In other words, I learn a lot from this book. Very good on the concept of "tone" -- gives a vocabulary and way of thinking concretely about things not well understood. His essay on "skittery poem of the moment" won an award for best essay of the year in POETRY magazine.

It's like someone who's a real person, not someone who lives in his head, but someone who contends with all the STUFF we all contend with, and at the same time, unpretentiously, can hold his own intellectually -- but in readable prose expressing common sense thinking -- with the theories and head games.

Way to go Tony.

-- Michael