“Shadows of Houses, H. L. Hix’s new collection, is both vatic and precise. Patiently looking at and through the quotidian, Hix registers 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.

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. 

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.