“Among the new writers who interest me most at the moment…. Hix is cerebral, ingeniously inventive, and often scary.  He is an experimental poet whose experiments usually succeed– a rare event in contemporary letters.” -Dana Gioia, Turnrow 

Chromatic was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry. It bears as its epigraph the philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s assertion that “Desire is the very nature or essence of every single individual.” The three sequences of poems in Chromatic test that claim. Each borrows its title: “Remarks on Color” from Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Eighteen Maniacs” from Duke Ellington, and “The Well-Tempered Clavier” from J. S. Bach. Exploiting those predecessors, the poems in Chromatic explore the full range of effects caused by human desire, from ecstasy to despair.

H. L. Hix has published five books of poetry, a book of literary criticism, and an anthology with Etruscan, and has two more books forthcoming.  He teaches in the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Wyoming.  His awards include the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Peregrine Smith Award, and fellowships from the NEA, the Kansas Arts Commission, and the Missouri Arts Council. 

Publication date: July 2006

Read an excerpt of Chromatic.