Collected Poems

by Lynda Hull, Mark Doty (Series Editor), Yusef Komunyakaa (Introduction)

The definitive collection of the poems of Lynda Hull, "perhaps the most intensely lyrical poet of her generation." (Mark Doty)


If each of us
contains, within, humankind's totality, each possibility
then I have been so fractured, so multiple & dazzling . . .
--from "The Window"

Lynda Hull's Collected Poems brings together her three collections--long unavailable--with a new introduction by Yusef Komunyakaa, and allows, for the first time, the full scale of her achievement to be seen. Edited with Hull's husband, David Wojahn, this book contains all the poems Hull published in her lifetime, before her untimely death in 1994.

Collected Poems is the first book in the Graywolf Poetry Re/View Series, which brings essential books of contemporary American poetry back into print. Each volume--chosen by series editor Mark Doty--is introduced by a poet who brings to the work a passionate admiration. The Graywolf Poetry Re/View Series brings all-but-lost masterworks of recent American poetry into the hands of a new generation of readers.

Genres: Poetry

233 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Lynda Hull was an American poet. She had published two collections of poetry when she died in a car accident in 1994. A third, The Only World (Harper Perennial, 1995), was published posthumously by her husband, the poet David Wojahn, and was a finalist for the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award. Collected Poems By Lynda Hull (Graywolf Press), was published in 2006.

Hull was the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council, and received four Pushcart Prizes. Her poems were published widely in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, AGNI, Colorado Review, The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry.

Hull was born and grew up in Newark, New Jersey. At the age of 16 she won a scholarship to Princeton University, but ran away from home. During the next ten years she struggled with heroin addiction on and off and lived in many places including various Chinatowns following a marriage to an immigrant from Shanghai.[7][8] In the early 1980s Hull started studying at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and earned her B.A., and then her M.A. from Johns Hopkins University. She also reconnected with her family during this time and met the poet David Wojahn, whom she married in 1984.

She taught English at Indiana University, De Paul University, and in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She served as a poetry editor for the literary journal Crazyhorse (magazine), which offers an annual award in her honor, the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize.

Reviews

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How perilous to choose not to love the life we're shown." ~ Seamus Heaney

[Andreana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rich language. Her poem in this collection, "Hollywood Jazz", is among one of my very favorite poems, especially of the noir influence.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely stunning collection of poetry. Hull weaves a narrative of addiction, death, heartbreak, love, and loss into a tapestry of cityscapes and jazz music. Reading Hull's poetry is a completely immersive experience. Wonderful sensory descriptions and a heaping helping of sadness but without that typical woe-is-me feel.

The Introduction by Yusef Komunyakaa and the Afterword by Hull's husband, David Wojahn are excellent as well. I particularly enjoyed how Wojahn gave us some insight into Hull's life, untimely passing, and how this collection came to be.

Definitely recommended.

[Janée Baugher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was recommended to my by teachers at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in the summer of 2007. Specifically for her ability to be lyrical, to let the poem get away from her, far from the intended, an offshoot of the narrative, to extend beyond the self, progress the poem. Sustained thought without thinking. Her half dozen ekphrastic poems seem to be a mere reference to art and not on visual art. Not extraordinary subject matter, as far as I'm concerned, but excellence in imagination and craft.

[Carly K · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an intense collection, pulling together several books into an omnibus that shows a huge percent of Hull's career as a writer. My favorite thing about her work is how often she draws on history, telling stories drawn from real events or set against major moments.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved these overall! Definitely needs to be read in small doses as Lynda Hull's poetic voice is very soothing and somewhat long-winded.

[j e rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Pages waiting for their ink, for / everything damned, for everything human & lovely."

[Diann Blakely · Rating 5 out of 5]

While we are given no juvenilia or drafts in Lynda Hull's posthumous COLLECTED POEMS, I'm delighted to say that I'm editing a book called EACH FUGITIVE MOMENT: ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF LYNDA HULL, and its kick-off essay, Dave Jauss's "To Become Music or Break: Lynda Hull as an Undergraduate" (CRAZYHORSE, No. 55, Winter 1998) does. Thus those unfamiliar with Jauss's startlingly revelatory essay, both lavish with deserved praise but sharp-eyed when and where appropriate, will, with patience as I aim to have the manuscript ready by January 1, 2016, a full decade after the publication of this volume, will have the opportunity to compare Hull's earliest work with those collected in this splendid volume, published by Graywolf. Here we are granted the vantage to observe what might be called the final three-quarters of a poet's maturation, which might be summarized as an exploration of a single theme: return. Hull revisits, year after year, often juxtaposed subjects such as heroin, Hart Crane, the runaway's life, the movies' fiat lux, AIDS, jazz and the abandoned places that the homeless call home. This volume shows just how hard — and by what methods — Hull worked to reach the level of "coruscating glamour" that typifies her best verse. Which has proven itself already canonical and even revered by writers as divergent in aesthetic but nationally esteemed as the introducer of both volumes and this year's recipient of the Academy of American Poets' Wallace Stevens Award (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/pr...), Yusef Komunyakaa, as well as a finalist for the National Book Award for THE CHAMELEON COUCH; our most recent inaugural poet, Elizabeth Alexander; NBCC finalist Mark Doty (please see my review here of ATLANTIS and HEAVEN'S COAST, also http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/m...), H.L. Hix, Jauss (an excerpt from whose essay may be read at http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v7n1/non... and co-editor of the indispensable STRONG MEASURES), Robert Pinsky, Robert Polito, and Susan Wood, to offer but an open palmful in "the world, the world, the world."

[T-mere · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've never read Hull you will be deeply moved by this collection of a lifetime of her genius craft, sadly she is no more but CP is such a beautiful and lasting tribute. -t

Excerpt of Washington Post review:


"Yearning of this kind, bathed in atmosphere, expresses an affection toward the past, as well as a distance from it, celebration as well as loss. Reaching back through the maze of generations, as far back as "the cafes of Warsaw," the poet takes as her guide the ephemeral thread of desire, suggested by details such as "ivory poker chips" and "Phil Verona with his Magic Violin."... Hull blends the elegiac and the sensuous into a proxy nostalgia so stylized it becomes ironic. The memory of listening to this music with her mother, dancing to it, becomes a valued, even totemic memory of memory. The child is entranced by the music partly because it comes from the mother's life before the child was born. That imagined past, made of family stories and old music, movies and anecdotes becomes a vital focus for the poet's imagination. The poem, alert to its own straining for recall, becomes a poignant way of "mouthing the words/ of a song I never knew."

[Mark Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

The late Lynda Hull was, in truth, just coming into her powers when she died in an auto accident in the early 90s. This book collects her three published works. The early work is promising if a bit wordy. The later work, though, shows an emerging lyric style of great passion and vibrance. One two many poems on dead friends and collegues--somewhat ironic when one realizes she died while not quite 40--but some of these poems deserve to be read and read again.

[Laura]

I simply can't finish this. I loved the first section, from her book Ghost Money. Literally devoured poem after poem. But the second book dragged, the long sentences became oppressive, the gritty, wounded beauty of it all started to chafe. I will have to return to it at some point, though.

[Mary Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyric grace and constant poetic courage. Gorgeous and disturbing. Heartbreakingly sound.

[Sue Silverman]

An excellent compilation from her three individual collections: Ghost Money, The Only World, and Star Ledger.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing, haunting poetry! Beautiful. This will be one of my most treasured books of poems.

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, wow, wow, wow. If you are going to AWP in NYC, go to the tribute to her.

[Aviya Kushner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, the Collected Poems!!!! I have learned so much from Lynda Hull.