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Sweet Ruin
Tony Hoagland captures the recognizably American landscape of a man of his sex, friendship, rock and roll, cars, high optimism, and disillusion. With what Robert Pinsky has called “the saving vulgarity of American poetry,” Hoagland’s small biographies of destruction reveal that defeat is a natural prelude to grace and loss a kind of threshold to freedom.
“A remarkable book. Without any rhetorical straining, with a disarming witty directness, these poems manage to transform every subject they touch, from love to politics, reaching out from the local and the personal to place the largest issues in the context of feeling. It’s hard to think of a recent book that succeeds with equal grace in fusing the truth-telling and the lyric impulse, clarity and song, in a way that produces such consistent pleasure and surprise.”—Carl Dennis
“This is wonderful exuberant, self-assured, instinct with wisdom and passion.”—Carolyn Kizer
“There is a fine strong sense in these poems of real lives being lived in a real world. This is something I greatly prize. And it is all colored, sometimes brightly, by the poet’s own highly romantic vision of things, so that what we may think we already know ends up seeming rich and strange.”—Donald Justice
“In Sweet Ruin, we’re banging along the Baja of our little American lives, spritzing truth from our lapels, elbowing our compadres, the Seven Deadly Sins. Maybe we’re unhappy in a less than tragic way, but our ruin requires of us a love and understanding and loyalty just as deep and sweet as any tragic hero’s. And it’s all the more poignant in a sad and funny way because the purpose of this forced spiritual march, Hoagland seems to be saying, is to leave ourselves behind. Undoubtedly, you will recognize among the body count many of your selves.”—Jack Myers
“A remarkable book. Without any rhetorical straining, with a disarming witty directness, these poems manage to transform every subject they touch, from love to politics, reaching out from the local and the personal to place the largest issues in the context of feeling. It’s hard to think of a recent book that succeeds with equal grace in fusing the truth-telling and the lyric impulse, clarity and song, in a way that produces such consistent pleasure and surprise.”—Carl Dennis
“This is wonderful exuberant, self-assured, instinct with wisdom and passion.”—Carolyn Kizer
“There is a fine strong sense in these poems of real lives being lived in a real world. This is something I greatly prize. And it is all colored, sometimes brightly, by the poet’s own highly romantic vision of things, so that what we may think we already know ends up seeming rich and strange.”—Donald Justice
“In Sweet Ruin, we’re banging along the Baja of our little American lives, spritzing truth from our lapels, elbowing our compadres, the Seven Deadly Sins. Maybe we’re unhappy in a less than tragic way, but our ruin requires of us a love and understanding and loyalty just as deep and sweet as any tragic hero’s. And it’s all the more poignant in a sad and funny way because the purpose of this forced spiritual march, Hoagland seems to be saying, is to leave ourselves behind. Undoubtedly, you will recognize among the body count many of your selves.”—Jack Myers
- GenresPoetry
92 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 1992
2 people are currently reading
289 people want to read
About the author
Tony Hoagland
48 books191 followersTony Hoagland was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He earned a BA from the University of Iowa and an MFA from the University of Arizona.
Hoagland was the author of the poetry collections Sweet Ruin (1992), which was chosen for the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and won the Zacharis Award from Emerson College; Donkey Gospel (1998), winner of the James Laughlin Award; What Narcissism Means to Me (2003), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Rain (2005); Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (2010); Application for Release from the Dream (2015); Recent Changes in the Vernacular (2017); and Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God (2018).
He has also published two collections of essays about poetry: Real Sofistakashun (2006) and Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays (2014). Hoagland’s poetry is known for its acerbic, witty take on contemporary life and “straight talk,” in the words of New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner: “At his frequent best … Hoagland is demonically in touch with the American demotic.”
Hoagland’s many honors and awards included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. He received the O.B. Hardison Prize for Poetry and Teaching from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award, and the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. Hoagland taught at the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson MFA program. He died in October 2018..
Hoagland was the author of the poetry collections Sweet Ruin (1992), which was chosen for the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and won the Zacharis Award from Emerson College; Donkey Gospel (1998), winner of the James Laughlin Award; What Narcissism Means to Me (2003), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Rain (2005); Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty (2010); Application for Release from the Dream (2015); Recent Changes in the Vernacular (2017); and Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God (2018).
He has also published two collections of essays about poetry: Real Sofistakashun (2006) and Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays (2014). Hoagland’s poetry is known for its acerbic, witty take on contemporary life and “straight talk,” in the words of New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner: “At his frequent best … Hoagland is demonically in touch with the American demotic.”
Hoagland’s many honors and awards included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. He received the O.B. Hardison Prize for Poetry and Teaching from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award, and the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. Hoagland taught at the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson MFA program. He died in October 2018..
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
February 24, 2018
Two Shades of Orange
It must be something like a bouquet for Him,
Our Lord, watching from great height,
when the garbagemen bang shoulders
with the flock of Hare Krishnas
at the cross roads of Ashby and Van Ness
—the orange and saffron uniforms
of the flowers in His garden
issuing forth, blossoming:
pan handlers and can handlers,
barefoot and booted,
skullshorn and unshaven,
And see—a traffic signal standing in
for Moses and his rod—how the tide
of early morning traffic parts
to allow safe passage of the tribe
from one curb to the next.
He catalogues
each callous on each foot, the empty eye
of each missed bootlace hole, each daub
of trash compactor-generated primal
mire, smeared upon the jumpsuit monogram.
He knows Vishnu, Johnson and
Rodriguez, knows
their addresses and wives’
favorite technicolor lipstick-flavored
kiss-techniques.
How great His appetite!
How marvelous the scope of His buffet,
the raucous welter of particulars
He loves—more ever than we can,
who are the agents of His presence,
as we maneuver through His premises,
and complicate His pleasure
when we avert our eyes
from one another’s souls,
as the very hungry will.
Properly
Look at this woman, properly
a little gawky
to compensate for
being beautiful,
—how her pale breasts dangle
in a sky blue shirt
arched above her cat.
Who is this character
in the sunlit living room
and how did she become so
willing to embrace you
at the fateful juncture
of a telephone directory
and a tropical plant?
Doesn’t she remind you
of a sunset or a drug
to make you talk? You think
Columbus may have felt like this,
sailing closer to the shore
that turned him into an American.
You have traveled far
as in a fairy tale
and passed through many arms
like foreign lands,
but now you are rather
like a child, just trying
to stand still—a man
who would believe in anything
credible enough to get
his mouth mixed up with hers.
The first kiss must be
very softly launched,
not to change the shape
or subject of these lips
into those of others you have
known—like footsteps which,
having got you here,
now need to be forgotten
so that history might
lie down and be made.
It must be something like a bouquet for Him,
Our Lord, watching from great height,
when the garbagemen bang shoulders
with the flock of Hare Krishnas
at the cross roads of Ashby and Van Ness
—the orange and saffron uniforms
of the flowers in His garden
issuing forth, blossoming:
pan handlers and can handlers,
barefoot and booted,
skullshorn and unshaven,
And see—a traffic signal standing in
for Moses and his rod—how the tide
of early morning traffic parts
to allow safe passage of the tribe
from one curb to the next.
He catalogues
each callous on each foot, the empty eye
of each missed bootlace hole, each daub
of trash compactor-generated primal
mire, smeared upon the jumpsuit monogram.
He knows Vishnu, Johnson and
Rodriguez, knows
their addresses and wives’
favorite technicolor lipstick-flavored
kiss-techniques.
How great His appetite!
How marvelous the scope of His buffet,
the raucous welter of particulars
He loves—more ever than we can,
who are the agents of His presence,
as we maneuver through His premises,
and complicate His pleasure
when we avert our eyes
from one another’s souls,
as the very hungry will.
Properly
Look at this woman, properly
a little gawky
to compensate for
being beautiful,
—how her pale breasts dangle
in a sky blue shirt
arched above her cat.
Who is this character
in the sunlit living room
and how did she become so
willing to embrace you
at the fateful juncture
of a telephone directory
and a tropical plant?
Doesn’t she remind you
of a sunset or a drug
to make you talk? You think
Columbus may have felt like this,
sailing closer to the shore
that turned him into an American.
You have traveled far
as in a fairy tale
and passed through many arms
like foreign lands,
but now you are rather
like a child, just trying
to stand still—a man
who would believe in anything
credible enough to get
his mouth mixed up with hers.
The first kiss must be
very softly launched,
not to change the shape
or subject of these lips
into those of others you have
known—like footsteps which,
having got you here,
now need to be forgotten
so that history might
lie down and be made.
April 6, 2011
Sweet Ruin by Tony Hoagland is another great book of poetry that despite its small page size, gives a surprisingly large amount of depth that is not often seen in even great novels. This review will go over several things, such as how Hoagland constantly makes references to the essentials of traveling, how it can skew one person’s sense of the world and how to enjoy the small things that life gives you, even if you can’t see it at first.
One of the things that stuck out the most to me was the first poem that I read when doing a quick skim of the book. “Perpetual Motion” really touched my heart with the way it tells the reader how things change over time; viewpoint, destination and outlooks on life all change with the choices we make. There were two lines that hit me the most as I read it. “It’s the kind of perpetual confusion that turns loved ones into strangers” and “With my foot on the gas, between the future and the past, I am here —where the desire to vanish is stronger than the desire to appear.” The first line reminded me of my past, where I would sometimes look at the people I love and think if I ever truly knew them, if they were constantly lying to me. The second line brings me to the dark points of my life, where things were at its worst. I can truly sympathize with the desire to vanish, because that had been all I felt at the time.
Not all of the poems were agreeable with me, however. Poems like “One Season” take a rather negative view on the male psyche. The speaker talks about caring only about himself, dumping a girlfriend after going out for a little while just to settle a score and treating life like it was worth nothing, despite what others may have told him otherwise, like the fireman that saved him when his house was on fire.
There are several other poems that range from humorous to serious. The poem that the book is titled after takes a dive into the thoughts of a child as he watches his father do things that he does not understand at the moment, but when he grew up and reflected on those memories, he understood that his father was leaving him a message, one that he should take care to listen to but by then it had been too late.
In each of his poems, Hoagland takes care to give life to each person that the reader sees in the poem. He makes them human rather than omnipotent, so that point of view does not become a bothersome issue and so that later, the lessons learned were ones that could be understood. He doesn’t try to confuse the reader with big words and tends to keep things rather simple in order to keep the poems enjoyable to read rather than frustrating to flip though.
All in all, this book makes for an enjoyable read for the rainy days to the lazy summer days. It’s a quick read, but it’s also the kind of book that makes you want to read it over and over and over again. The University of Wisconsin Press did well by publishing this series of poems.
One of the things that stuck out the most to me was the first poem that I read when doing a quick skim of the book. “Perpetual Motion” really touched my heart with the way it tells the reader how things change over time; viewpoint, destination and outlooks on life all change with the choices we make. There were two lines that hit me the most as I read it. “It’s the kind of perpetual confusion that turns loved ones into strangers” and “With my foot on the gas, between the future and the past, I am here —where the desire to vanish is stronger than the desire to appear.” The first line reminded me of my past, where I would sometimes look at the people I love and think if I ever truly knew them, if they were constantly lying to me. The second line brings me to the dark points of my life, where things were at its worst. I can truly sympathize with the desire to vanish, because that had been all I felt at the time.
Not all of the poems were agreeable with me, however. Poems like “One Season” take a rather negative view on the male psyche. The speaker talks about caring only about himself, dumping a girlfriend after going out for a little while just to settle a score and treating life like it was worth nothing, despite what others may have told him otherwise, like the fireman that saved him when his house was on fire.
There are several other poems that range from humorous to serious. The poem that the book is titled after takes a dive into the thoughts of a child as he watches his father do things that he does not understand at the moment, but when he grew up and reflected on those memories, he understood that his father was leaving him a message, one that he should take care to listen to but by then it had been too late.
In each of his poems, Hoagland takes care to give life to each person that the reader sees in the poem. He makes them human rather than omnipotent, so that point of view does not become a bothersome issue and so that later, the lessons learned were ones that could be understood. He doesn’t try to confuse the reader with big words and tends to keep things rather simple in order to keep the poems enjoyable to read rather than frustrating to flip though.
All in all, this book makes for an enjoyable read for the rainy days to the lazy summer days. It’s a quick read, but it’s also the kind of book that makes you want to read it over and over and over again. The University of Wisconsin Press did well by publishing this series of poems.
May 8, 2020
Wow. So moving, so witty. These poems made me feel something and examine myself.
September 17, 2010
3.5
More Great Poetry.
Review
“A remarkable book. Without any rhetorical straining, with a disarming witty directness, these poems manage to transform every subject they touch, from love to politics, reaching out from the local and the personal to place the largest issues in the context of feeling. It’s hard to think of a recent book that succeeds with equal grace in fusing the truth-telling and the lyric impulse, clarity and song, in a way that produces such consistent pleasure and surprise.”—Carl Dennis
“This is wonderful poetry: exuberant, self-assured, instinct with wisdom and passion.”—Carolyn Kizer
“There is a fine strong sense in these poems of real lives being lived in a real world. This is something I greatly prize. And it is all colored, sometimes brightly, by the poet’s own highly romantic vision of things, so that what we may think we already know ends up seeming rich and strange.”—Donald Justice
Book Description
Tony Hoagland captures the recognizably American landscape of a man of his generation: sex, friendship, rock and roll, cars, high optimism, and disillusion. With what Robert Pinsky has called “the saving vulgarity of American poetry,” Hoagland’s small biographies of destruction reveal that defeat is a natural prelude to grace and loss a kind of threshold to freedom.
More Great Poetry.
Review
“A remarkable book. Without any rhetorical straining, with a disarming witty directness, these poems manage to transform every subject they touch, from love to politics, reaching out from the local and the personal to place the largest issues in the context of feeling. It’s hard to think of a recent book that succeeds with equal grace in fusing the truth-telling and the lyric impulse, clarity and song, in a way that produces such consistent pleasure and surprise.”—Carl Dennis
“This is wonderful poetry: exuberant, self-assured, instinct with wisdom and passion.”—Carolyn Kizer
“There is a fine strong sense in these poems of real lives being lived in a real world. This is something I greatly prize. And it is all colored, sometimes brightly, by the poet’s own highly romantic vision of things, so that what we may think we already know ends up seeming rich and strange.”—Donald Justice
Book Description
Tony Hoagland captures the recognizably American landscape of a man of his generation: sex, friendship, rock and roll, cars, high optimism, and disillusion. With what Robert Pinsky has called “the saving vulgarity of American poetry,” Hoagland’s small biographies of destruction reveal that defeat is a natural prelude to grace and loss a kind of threshold to freedom.
May 12, 2012
Excerpt from "The Word:"
Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,
between "green thread"
and "broccoli," you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."
From "Emigration," a poem about illness and departure:
Try being sick for a year
then having that year turn into two,
until the memory of your health is like an island
going out of sight behind you
There are a lot of moments in poems that stand out to me.
From "Perpetual Motion," the road trip poem:
flight into
an anonymity so deep
it has no bottom,
only signs to tell you what direction
you are falling in
and
I am here -
here where the desire to vanish
is stronger than the desire to appear.
I like the image of returning to the wreckage of the burning house of memory in the poem, "One Season."
"How a place becomes a part of you" in the poem, "Second Nature:"
"I can feel this orange and tender light/ taking a position inside of me -/ painting a strip of phosphorescent,/ pumpkin colored warmth . . ."
Other moments:
From "A Dowry:"
So I let myself be talked to
by one plum-colored weed,
dipping on its stalk - a swoon
so drunk and delicate,
it hurt.
From "Travellers:"
He shreds a napkin into triangle-shaped bits;
she pierces them with toothpicks,
and together they have fashioned
the small white flags of their surrender
Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,
between "green thread"
and "broccoli," you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."
From "Emigration," a poem about illness and departure:
Try being sick for a year
then having that year turn into two,
until the memory of your health is like an island
going out of sight behind you
There are a lot of moments in poems that stand out to me.
From "Perpetual Motion," the road trip poem:
flight into
an anonymity so deep
it has no bottom,
only signs to tell you what direction
you are falling in
and
I am here -
here where the desire to vanish
is stronger than the desire to appear.
I like the image of returning to the wreckage of the burning house of memory in the poem, "One Season."
"How a place becomes a part of you" in the poem, "Second Nature:"
"I can feel this orange and tender light/ taking a position inside of me -/ painting a strip of phosphorescent,/ pumpkin colored warmth . . ."
Other moments:
From "A Dowry:"
So I let myself be talked to
by one plum-colored weed,
dipping on its stalk - a swoon
so drunk and delicate,
it hurt.
From "Travellers:"
He shreds a napkin into triangle-shaped bits;
she pierces them with toothpicks,
and together they have fashioned
the small white flags of their surrender
July 3, 2009
By far the best poems are in the book's final section, when Hoagland meditates on death and -- more powerfully -- life. In "Safeway," the author recalls what it was like to, at the still-confusing age of 17, lead his cancer-ridden mother through the supermarket:
Maybe months of sickness had burned away my mother's shame
and left in her dry mouth
a taste for irony, maybe she wanted
to show the populace
what death looked like in person
or maybe it was simply her last chance
to make small talk with the neighbors
who stopped to say hello--
The poem concludes, "And I seem sweet at seventeen, innocent / even in my rate -- / trying to protect / what didn't need protecting / from what couldn't be saved."
The poem "Emigration" comes highly recommended to anyone who's been sick for any length of time. "Try being sick for a year, / then having that year turn into two, / until the memory of your health is like an island / going out of sight behind you // and you sail on in twilight, / with the sound of waves...."
Maybe months of sickness had burned away my mother's shame
and left in her dry mouth
a taste for irony, maybe she wanted
to show the populace
what death looked like in person
or maybe it was simply her last chance
to make small talk with the neighbors
who stopped to say hello--
The poem concludes, "And I seem sweet at seventeen, innocent / even in my rate -- / trying to protect / what didn't need protecting / from what couldn't be saved."
The poem "Emigration" comes highly recommended to anyone who's been sick for any length of time. "Try being sick for a year, / then having that year turn into two, / until the memory of your health is like an island / going out of sight behind you // and you sail on in twilight, / with the sound of waves...."
January 29, 2009
This is another one of those books I proudly own in my small poetry collection. Hoagland deconstructs America and the American way of life through a man's eyes.
I think that detail is important, but it shouldn't be construed as a negative - I did not feel the collection was condescending or patronizing, I simply felt that i was reading the experiences and thoughts through a masculine perspective.
Like a lot of poets, he alludes to various figures, things and places that I have to mark and look up - a simple capitalized word that refers to an entire body within a small line in the poem. But most of his works are highly accessible, thought-provoking, filled with vibrant imagery that stays with you long after you've closed the book.
Particularly liked "Carnal Knowledge"; "In the Land of Lotus Eaters"; and the title poem. Often, I read a few poems in this book before I start writing.
I think that detail is important, but it shouldn't be construed as a negative - I did not feel the collection was condescending or patronizing, I simply felt that i was reading the experiences and thoughts through a masculine perspective.
Like a lot of poets, he alludes to various figures, things and places that I have to mark and look up - a simple capitalized word that refers to an entire body within a small line in the poem. But most of his works are highly accessible, thought-provoking, filled with vibrant imagery that stays with you long after you've closed the book.
Particularly liked "Carnal Knowledge"; "In the Land of Lotus Eaters"; and the title poem. Often, I read a few poems in this book before I start writing.
April 13, 2015
Not his best collection. I believe this was Hoagland's first with a larger press. It was interesting to see some of the seeds in these early works which would come into full bloom in Donkey Gospel and What Narcissism Means To Me. That said, if you're looking to get into some Hoagland for the first time, I wouldn't start here.
March 25, 2009
He's a good poet, but I can't bring myself to really like him.
February 14, 2025
Second Nature
I must be enjoying my sixth or seventh life by now, watching the orange, early morning sun gleam thickly through the fabric of an evergreen
as the smoke churns dark and sap-like up, then wafts away from the chimneyspout. In the past, when I heard people talk about
how a place becomes a part of you, I always thought they were being metaphorical, but right now I can feel this orange and tender light
taking a position inside of me-- painting a stripe of phosphorescent, pumpkin-colored warmth along one wall
of the inside of my skull. I can feel the washed-out scarlet of these winter fields becoming an ingredient
of my personality, the way that in the noisy urban center of every molecule of chlorophyll,
one atom of magnesium resides, as quiet and essential as a church. Seated in appreciation of this calm,
in the easy chair of my appreciation, I have a view of what has brought me here-- not just the landscapes I've survived,
not just the blind motion of the waves, but what I grasped and made a part of what I am-- a second nature, scavenged from those things
I chose to love or fear. There was a sycamore in Arizona I cared enough about to take into my heart, and now
I hear the wind moving through its branches just below my clavicle. There was a kiss that changed the history of my mouth--kiss
that was a courtship, marriage and divorce sandwiched in the thirty-second intersection of her lips and mine. When I look
at all the odds and ends I'm made of, I think I'm just some kind of irrationally-proportioned
Frankenstein, on pilgrimage to god knows where, humming a song as he lumbers through the forest
of the middle of his life. His left eye still remembers a sunset that it saw in 1964; his right
beholds the snow upon a branch with so much childish love it threatens continually to break
the rockpile of his heart. But he keeps going on, half-thrilled and half-appalled
by his own strangeness--wondering what god he could be fashioned in the image of? What handiwork of what mad scientist?
I must be enjoying my sixth or seventh life by now, watching the orange, early morning sun gleam thickly through the fabric of an evergreen
as the smoke churns dark and sap-like up, then wafts away from the chimneyspout. In the past, when I heard people talk about
how a place becomes a part of you, I always thought they were being metaphorical, but right now I can feel this orange and tender light
taking a position inside of me-- painting a stripe of phosphorescent, pumpkin-colored warmth along one wall
of the inside of my skull. I can feel the washed-out scarlet of these winter fields becoming an ingredient
of my personality, the way that in the noisy urban center of every molecule of chlorophyll,
one atom of magnesium resides, as quiet and essential as a church. Seated in appreciation of this calm,
in the easy chair of my appreciation, I have a view of what has brought me here-- not just the landscapes I've survived,
not just the blind motion of the waves, but what I grasped and made a part of what I am-- a second nature, scavenged from those things
I chose to love or fear. There was a sycamore in Arizona I cared enough about to take into my heart, and now
I hear the wind moving through its branches just below my clavicle. There was a kiss that changed the history of my mouth--kiss
that was a courtship, marriage and divorce sandwiched in the thirty-second intersection of her lips and mine. When I look
at all the odds and ends I'm made of, I think I'm just some kind of irrationally-proportioned
Frankenstein, on pilgrimage to god knows where, humming a song as he lumbers through the forest
of the middle of his life. His left eye still remembers a sunset that it saw in 1964; his right
beholds the snow upon a branch with so much childish love it threatens continually to break
the rockpile of his heart. But he keeps going on, half-thrilled and half-appalled
by his own strangeness--wondering what god he could be fashioned in the image of? What handiwork of what mad scientist?
January 12, 2025
It was about a year ago that I stumbled across the work of Tony Hoagland while scouring the small section of poetry at my public library. I quickly went through what can only be described as a Hoagland phase as I purchased several collections of his thoughtful, heart-wrenching poetry. Some collections more profound or startling than others, but Tony Hoagland quickly became one of my favorite poets.
The first two poems in this wonderful little collection were what sold me. Perpetual Motion and For Men Only connected with me in ways few poems have, and I found myself stunned. A good poet puts to words something often felt but rarely realized, and while Hoagland wrestled with the topic of fright or Flight, and with his father living "from the height of an adjustable bed", I found myself stuck in the past, in my memories, in my own voyage to this place where I am, and the truth of his words washed over me, and how I remember my own father being reduced to something small in those final days, and his quiet reservations as he distanced himself between the good years and the bad.
This book starts with a journey, and it is a journey through the hellscape of Americana where we try to fill up all those darkest places with the dream, but it's empty and futile, it's a land of cause harm or be harmed, and where is there hope? This is a book of becoming, where Hoagland invites you to sit with the good and the bad, and to, in the end, develop a new way of seeing. Not a new way of forgetfulness or regret, but in simply being. Where the desire to vanish is stronger than the desire to appear, and in the end, what brings solace is not to somehow afford an explanation for the loss and the pain, but to tell a story, where we become that which we longed to become, but never quite find satisfaction with how we get there. And in spite of our longing to disappear, we still have the audacity to show up.
The first two poems in this wonderful little collection were what sold me. Perpetual Motion and For Men Only connected with me in ways few poems have, and I found myself stunned. A good poet puts to words something often felt but rarely realized, and while Hoagland wrestled with the topic of fright or Flight, and with his father living "from the height of an adjustable bed", I found myself stuck in the past, in my memories, in my own voyage to this place where I am, and the truth of his words washed over me, and how I remember my own father being reduced to something small in those final days, and his quiet reservations as he distanced himself between the good years and the bad.
This book starts with a journey, and it is a journey through the hellscape of Americana where we try to fill up all those darkest places with the dream, but it's empty and futile, it's a land of cause harm or be harmed, and where is there hope? This is a book of becoming, where Hoagland invites you to sit with the good and the bad, and to, in the end, develop a new way of seeing. Not a new way of forgetfulness or regret, but in simply being. Where the desire to vanish is stronger than the desire to appear, and in the end, what brings solace is not to somehow afford an explanation for the loss and the pain, but to tell a story, where we become that which we longed to become, but never quite find satisfaction with how we get there. And in spite of our longing to disappear, we still have the audacity to show up.
November 23, 2023
Alas, I think I have now read every Tony Hoagland there is. And there will be no more.
This is an early one and not my favorite but still wonderful, quirky, imaginative, and fun. My online poetry group kept mentioning his poems. They are the only persons in my circle who seemed familiar with him and I put off buying a book for a couple of years. Now I own them all! And I highly recommend Hoagland to anyone interested in poetry. He is a relaxing, inspiring poet. Take a gander. You won't be sorry.
This is an early one and not my favorite but still wonderful, quirky, imaginative, and fun. My online poetry group kept mentioning his poems. They are the only persons in my circle who seemed familiar with him and I put off buying a book for a couple of years. Now I own them all! And I highly recommend Hoagland to anyone interested in poetry. He is a relaxing, inspiring poet. Take a gander. You won't be sorry.
April 3, 2019
This is one of my favorite poetry compilation of Professor Hoagland. Yes he was my teacher and he was an amazing. I am so lucky and thankful of the fact that I got to meet him in person and even got an autograph from him. It is very sad that we lost a talented writer and an amazing poet. He made me a better writer and his writing inspires me sometimes I would open this book because it's about life and the experiences his imagination is very intriguing.
December 26, 2019
Hoagland remains my cup of tea.
February 8, 2022
Love Hoagland, but this one wasn’t my favorite collection of his.
March 10, 2025
As always, anything by Tony Hoagland is brilliant.
April 23, 2025
i love this man.
Want to read
June 1, 2025Cutting is for Sweet Ruin and Safeway
By Tony Hoagland
By Tony Hoagland
August 17, 2009
Tony Hoagland is currently my favorite poet, and I pretty much devoured Sweet Ruin. If you're partial to accessible narrative poetry that is often very personal in nature, Hoagland's your man. He writes from the gut, but not without some inventive use of language. Here's a choice snippet: "I remember the pink, candy-colored lights/strung around an auditorium/shaped like an enormous ear/and a single, distant figure on a stage, gripping a guitar/that twisted like a serpent/trying to turn into a bird."
Want to read
July 26, 2012I can't find Hoagland's book that I read entitled "Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty." (Does it bother anyone else that you can't italicize here so you have to put titles of large works in quotation marks? Cuz it bothers me.) It was incredible, but a few of the poems were a little . . . graphic for my taste. But he is easily one of my favorite modern poets--brilliant. But my creative writing professor highly recommended this book as well, and I've been meaning to buy both of them.
October 26, 2016
Hoagland's first book is very masculine and very American (neither surprising, I've often described his voice in these terms, among others), but I'm always surprised and delighted that such a voice would delight me so. I love his sense of humor, his ability to be both vulnerable and brash, his honesty, and his eye for detail. Hoagland always sounds, to me, like he has his audience in mind at all times, and he wants to tell us the truth, he wants to tell us a story. His work sounds like he's not at all trying to impress us, but the poems are crafted with care, and so they do.
April 4, 2009
Ever since I read this, I want to start everything I write this way: "That was the summer..."
Oh man. It is only one in a million poets who manage to win me over, and Tony Hoagland reaaaaaally wins me over. A short excerpt from one of my favorite poems in the bunch (oddly enough, the very poem that starts in the above manner).
"...I came through
in the spastic, fugitive, half-alive manner
of accident survivors. Fuck anyone
who says I could have done it
Differently..."
Oh man. It is only one in a million poets who manage to win me over, and Tony Hoagland reaaaaaally wins me over. A short excerpt from one of my favorite poems in the bunch (oddly enough, the very poem that starts in the above manner).
"...I came through
in the spastic, fugitive, half-alive manner
of accident survivors. Fuck anyone
who says I could have done it
Differently..."
December 8, 2010
The poems I'll remember from this collection are "Emigration", which begins "Try being sick for a year/then having that year turn into two,/until the memory of your health is like an island/going out of sight behind you/and you sail on in twilight.." and "Safeway", which is about the poet's mother. Both are from the last section of the book and to my mind, successfully marry the poet's skill and wit with feeling.
December 6, 2024
Tony Hoagland is an American poet, and one I hold very dear to my heart. His poems are often prosaic, while still being verses, and mostly story driven. These stories often feel like glimpses into people's daily lives that has all the pathos and urgency of a Victorian novel, but better.
Hoagland’s poems have a sense of ease mixed with emotion in them that I envy. They’re easy to read but pack a punch. Damn, he’s good.
Hoagland’s poems have a sense of ease mixed with emotion in them that I envy. They’re easy to read but pack a punch. Damn, he’s good.
November 6, 2012
To be savored! I'll just quote a few lines from "Mercy,' one of the poems in Sweet Ruin:
But the moon stayed out of reach,
imperturbable, polite.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
It's seen my kind
a million times before
upon this parapet of loneliness and fear
and how we come around in time
to lifting up our heads,
looking for the kindness
that would make revenge unnecessary.
But the moon stayed out of reach,
imperturbable, polite.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
It's seen my kind
a million times before
upon this parapet of loneliness and fear
and how we come around in time
to lifting up our heads,
looking for the kindness
that would make revenge unnecessary.
April 3, 2013
I personally love Tony Hoagland, but this poetry collection fell a bit flat in my opinion. I really enjoyed many of the pieces, but there were also others which I would argue should have ended earlier, or just didn't inspire anything within me. Perhaps I'm being a bit too cynical. Even so, a nice collection, but nothing stellar.
Recommended Poems: "In Gratitude for Talk," "A Change in Plans"
Recommended Poems: "In Gratitude for Talk," "A Change in Plans"
January 13, 2008
Hoagland is funny, real, and accessible. Mostly narrative, his poems are beautiful and solid. They often wander, but are grounded in a sense of self. Read him when you want to feel like a human being. He's not quiet laughter through tears, but he can be laughter through loneliness.
March 15, 2014
In his younger work, Tony is more cavalier about political generalizations, but the title poem is wonderful.
Hoagland's works feel like they ought to be posted on the doors and lockers of middle-aged men the way Keats and Kerouac populate hinge-hangers of adolescents.
Hoagland's works feel like they ought to be posted on the doors and lockers of middle-aged men the way Keats and Kerouac populate hinge-hangers of adolescents.
March 9, 2010
Tony Hoagland is a great contemporary poet. He writes about American manhood, both hetero- and homosexual, and the struggles we all face in relationships, both sexual and platonic, with people and with our culture. Brilliant and highly recommended.
Read
August 2, 2011Talk about a beautiful romp through destruction, graceless grace, the poetry of vernacular, and you will find yourself inevitably talking about Tony Hoagland's "Sweet Ruin." A wonderful and compelling collection which bids you to return again and again.
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