Shadows of Houses, H. L. Hix
H. L. Hix has published an anthology, Wild and Whirling Words: A Poetic Conversation (2004), and six books of poetry and literary criticism with Etruscan, including Shadows of Houses (2005), Chromatic (2006), God Bless: A Political/Poetic Discourse (2007), Legible Heavens (2008), Incident Light (2009), and As Easy As Lying: Essays on Poetry (2002). He has two more books forthcoming from Etruscan, First Fire, Then Birds (2010) and Lines of Inquiry (2011). His seven other books include Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes: Legacies of Postmodern Theory (State University of New York Press, 1995) and translations of Estonian and Lithuanian poetry.
In addition to having been a finalist for the National Book Award for Chromatic, 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. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin, taught at Kansas City Art Institute, and was an administrator at The Cleveland Institute of Art, before accepting his current position as professor in the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Wyoming. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin and at Shanghai University.
Find out more about H.L. Hix on his author page.
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Shadows of Houses, H. L. Hix’s new collection, is both vatic and precise. Patiently looking at and through the quotidian, Hixregisters the tiny and immense phenomena of change and variation the seasons and hours bring. The remarkable sequence “The God of Window Screens and Honeysuckle” is a compendium of outer and inner weather—a naturalist’s, neighbor’s, philosopher’s, and poet’s almanac, and a source of wisdom and beauty I shall regularly return to.” —Rachel Hadas
“Hix’s measured, crystalline particles of everyday life melt, moment by moment by moment, into song.”—Charles Bernstein
“When you read a good poem you admire it; when you read a great poem, you fear it, because something of the original fire of composition has been transmitted. There are many good and admirable poems in H. L. Hix’s Shadows of Houses, and some very good, memorable, teachable poems about the mingled wonders and horrors of living in the world. But there is also a great poem in this book, “The God of Restlessness.” It is odd and sad and profound and pitch-perfect and muscular. In its synoptic sweep it recalls Piers Plowman, the Georgics, and Ammons’s Garbage—and yet its nose is so close to the earth that it feels also like a sonnet by Clare: it’s one of the best poems I have read in years.” — Dan Chiasson, Poetry, November 2005.
Listen to Garrison Keilor reading an excerpt from Hix’s Shadows of Houses, the poem “17.”
Publication date: January 2005
Read an excerpt of Shadows of Houses.
