Author: rhoff1949

Posted by rhoff1949 on February 18, 2014 in Featured

I am posting a link here to the book trailer for Kathleen Aguero’s latest, After ThatHere is the title poem from that fine collection, her fifth:AFTER THAT she wouldn’t leave the house, or she’d be gone for weeks and return smelling of cigarettes and bleach.She’d say what anyone would, but, like thunder in winter, it […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on February 15, 2014 in Featured

I have taken a good, long while off from this blog while I poured my time and energy into the new memoir, Love & Fury. Yesterday, Valentine’s Day, I found myself tinkering with this poem: AGAINST COOL When you pretend you’re not but know you are, you suffer worse than if you just confess you […]

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Love & Fury, A Memoir, coming June 3rd

Posted by rhoff1949 on February 7, 2014 in Books

  An acclaimed author reflects on his upbringing in a post–World War II blue-collar family and comes to terms with the racism, sexism, and other toxic values he inherited. Love & Fury tells a story that comprises five generations of an American family, examining the continuing impact of history as it shapes the lives of […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on December 30, 2012 in Featured

The year winds down…. This poem is from EMBLEM: DECEMBER 31st All my undone actions wander naked across the calendar, a band of skinny hunter-gatherers, blown snow scattered here and there, stumbling toward a future folded in the New Year I secure with a pushpin: January’s picture a painting from the 17th century, a still-life: skull […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on October 8, 2012 in Featured

A poem from EMBLEM for Columbus Day: EVERYONE Columbus thought he had discovered the Indies so he called the people he encountered Indians, but he was wrong; he had discovered the working class. He took their sage, not their advice; it smoldered like rage but smelled nice. One of the Santa Maria’s crew, avaricious and […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on September 21, 2012 in Featured

Happy 78th Birthday, Leonard Cohen! If I remember correctly, we were talking about his friend and mentor, the poet Irving Layton, whose work I encountered as a young man at a time when I really needed it. His poems of grief and anger showed me a way forward in a dark time. And of course […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on September 14, 2012 in Featured

Today’s wood s lot has a good deal more depth in its treatment of Robert Bringhurst. Thank you to Mark Woods. 

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Posted by rhoff1949 on September 13, 2012 in Featured

I want to dedicate this post to the work of the Canadian poet, Robert Bringhurst. It is either the perfect example of our xenophobic poetic culture in the US, or else my own narrow-gauge attention to what is — in this case so gloriously — being written elsewhere in North America that I had not […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on July 10, 2012 in Featured

Here are three poems of mine from the most recent Manhattan Review:COROLLARY The body, six feet underground, requires six days to break down. Bulbs must wait in warming loam six months or more. And so the earth is vast, love urgent. PATRIMONY 1. He is out of work. We are out of money. My mother’s […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on June 29, 2012 in Featured

This from Chris Lydon today. Reposting it here. These are conversations that shed light, serious inquiries into what has befallen us and speculations about how we might survive with our humanity intact. Dearest Ones: The ghost of Tony Judt, historian and prophet, hovers over the best conversations we’ve recorded this spring — for all the […]

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