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HOG: Poems
PRAISE FOR
Poems that echo the blues
Words that howl and sing
Writing that reminds us and restores us
In the hard life the music endures
— Alan Govenar, author of Texas The Rise of a Contemporary Sound
"Van Garrett's Hog meets the blues where it lives, sliding the reader along a guitar neck into juke joint cadences signified even in the poems' 'Pig-headed and Crazy,' 'Sardines and Milk,' 'Fingers and Pain.' Just as in the best blues songs, the flash of a line thrusts us into the love and the lust and the mud and the blood, the struggles and loves and losses and pride in a bluesman's life that constitute his art as much as his songs themselves. This is the world of Lightnin' and Muddy, Blind Lemon and the Wolf. The poems here sketch the biography of Slim Harpo's imagined godson Hog, but more than that, they echo and extend the long poetic life of the blues form, a lyric value Langston sensed long ago and Van Garrett keeps vibrant in these pages."
— Jason Mellard, Assistant Director, Center for Texas Music History, Texas State University
The brilliant, and perfect courage of this collection of poems is that they turn away from nothing, and come from deep beneath the raw, gritty, sexual essence of what for me is the blues. Brightly painted word images punctuated like a smoking guitar solo with all the gyrating heat and classic, bygone simplicity of those who have come before. You are pulled into winged dreams through the eyes of a bluesman, and then awakened with a shock, like biting your tongue hard, and tasting fresh blood in your mouth. Loudly, here is life, here is love, here is pain, here is the blues, babies.
— Deb Ryder – Singer, Songwriter, Blues Artist
Van G. Garrett explores moments in the life of bluesman Elmore "Hog" Garrett, the imagined godson of the legendary bluesman Slim Harpo. With poems that breathe life into this Southern story, Van G. Garrett's exploration into the fictionalized Elmore Garrett is both arresting and engaging, a worthy salute to one of America's authentic art forms.
Poems that echo the blues
Words that howl and sing
Writing that reminds us and restores us
In the hard life the music endures
— Alan Govenar, author of Texas The Rise of a Contemporary Sound
"Van Garrett's Hog meets the blues where it lives, sliding the reader along a guitar neck into juke joint cadences signified even in the poems' 'Pig-headed and Crazy,' 'Sardines and Milk,' 'Fingers and Pain.' Just as in the best blues songs, the flash of a line thrusts us into the love and the lust and the mud and the blood, the struggles and loves and losses and pride in a bluesman's life that constitute his art as much as his songs themselves. This is the world of Lightnin' and Muddy, Blind Lemon and the Wolf. The poems here sketch the biography of Slim Harpo's imagined godson Hog, but more than that, they echo and extend the long poetic life of the blues form, a lyric value Langston sensed long ago and Van Garrett keeps vibrant in these pages."
— Jason Mellard, Assistant Director, Center for Texas Music History, Texas State University
The brilliant, and perfect courage of this collection of poems is that they turn away from nothing, and come from deep beneath the raw, gritty, sexual essence of what for me is the blues. Brightly painted word images punctuated like a smoking guitar solo with all the gyrating heat and classic, bygone simplicity of those who have come before. You are pulled into winged dreams through the eyes of a bluesman, and then awakened with a shock, like biting your tongue hard, and tasting fresh blood in your mouth. Loudly, here is life, here is love, here is pain, here is the blues, babies.
— Deb Ryder – Singer, Songwriter, Blues Artist
Van G. Garrett explores moments in the life of bluesman Elmore "Hog" Garrett, the imagined godson of the legendary bluesman Slim Harpo. With poems that breathe life into this Southern story, Van G. Garrett's exploration into the fictionalized Elmore Garrett is both arresting and engaging, a worthy salute to one of America's authentic art forms.
35 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 18, 2017
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