Just a little taste… the first poem in EMBLEM, published in December. adapted from Alciati’s Book of Emblems[1] Emblem 89 AGAINST THOSE WEALTHY VIA PUBLIC MISCHIEF Avarice in check, the country at peace, does not please everyone. Those who fish for eels, for example, who know how to slice one into segments thin as paper […]
ARBOR VITAE “Trees are Earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.” — Rabindranath Tagore My neighbor across the street wants to cut down the tree in the front of her house; she says its roots are compromising her foundation, and besides, she wants more sun so she can grow flowers in her […]
The year winds down…. This poem is from the new collection, 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 […]
Publication Day! EMBLEM
My new collection of poems, EMBLEM, is now available from Barrow Street Press. Poems from this collection appear online at Janus Head, here, and here, at Agni, here, and here, and at Solstice Literary Magazine, here, and here. It will also be available from Small Press Distribution and Amazon any day now. Here’s what others have […]
New poems up at Agni
Two new poems of mine, “Inventory” and “Good Boy” are up at Agni.Hope you enjoy.
prompted by Penn State’s Criminal Conspiracy
The following essay, Pictures of Boyhood, may be of use to those who are asking the hard questions about the relationship of American sports culture — some would say the American cult of sports — to the sexual abuse of boys. It first appeared in The Literary Review Vol. 45 #4, in 2002, where it […]
Penn State Criminal Conspiracy
I have been getting a lot of email from people who want me to, expect me to, write about the recent revelations at Penn State. I cannot. That whole world, that whole milieu, is still very real to me. I have tried to parse it out over and over again: the linkages between hypermasculinity, locker rooms, […]
Another poem from Without Paradise: THE BACKYARD STUFF’S ESSENTIAL after A. R. Ammons There’s a small hill in the tall grass in the backyard that’s a perfect pillow. Summer’s my lazy time if lazy’s understood the way I mean it: wagging fingers, dirty looks be damned. Implied utility’s a constant in a view, even […]
RICHARD HOFFMAN 
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