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Howard Hart Selected Poems: Six Sets, 1951-1983
Book by Hart, Howard
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 23, 2025
This one was hard to rate.
Howard Hart's poetry falls under the categories of 'Beat poetry' and 'San Francisco Renaissance poetry,' but it's also definitely what I would call 'jazz poetry' and at times could be dubbed 'Surrealism'.
However, none of this pigeon-holing and categorization is doing us any favours here because it fails to desribe what Hart's poetry actually does. What does it do? Now, that's a very good question.
To me, it's very rich in sound, replete with alliteration, assonance and sometimes nice instances of rhyme too. There is a definite metre there too, sometimes more jazz-oriented, at other times more 'conventional' for lack of a better word.
There are also these striking, jarring Surrealistic images that come out of nowhere and surprise you.
Now, the question that bothers me slightly, and which will bother many readers who pick up this volume is this: what does it all mean? Well, your guess is as good as mine.
In fact, I'm not sure it's meant to mean anything other than what you get out of it as an individual reader. After reading a brilliantly written Foreword by Al Young and an equally impressive Intro by Arun Nevader, I was ready to be blown away. Well, I wasn't. It wasn't what I expected at all in fact. Now, by some standards, this should automatically give it full marks. But on the other hand, one must wonder what is the purpose of pure 'sound poetry' if music can do it better in the first place? And that for me is the ultimate conundrum. What is the purpose of sound poetry? Is it just to delight the ear through its rhythms, assonance, alliteration and other devices? Or is it something else?
I think poetry can be both sonically interesting and also excite the reader with interesting and novel insights. Bob Kaufman's poetry is one example that comes to mind, for example.
Weighing things up, I feel that Howard Hart's poetry is an acquired taste and therefore I want to keep reading this as the poems may 'reveal themselves' more slowly over time, like a flower slowly opening its petals to the sun. Let's hope. But for now, this is a solid three stars, almost four. Slightly underwhelming but definitely one of a kind. I've never read anything quite like it.
Howard Hart's poetry falls under the categories of 'Beat poetry' and 'San Francisco Renaissance poetry,' but it's also definitely what I would call 'jazz poetry' and at times could be dubbed 'Surrealism'.
However, none of this pigeon-holing and categorization is doing us any favours here because it fails to desribe what Hart's poetry actually does. What does it do? Now, that's a very good question.
To me, it's very rich in sound, replete with alliteration, assonance and sometimes nice instances of rhyme too. There is a definite metre there too, sometimes more jazz-oriented, at other times more 'conventional' for lack of a better word.
There are also these striking, jarring Surrealistic images that come out of nowhere and surprise you.
Now, the question that bothers me slightly, and which will bother many readers who pick up this volume is this: what does it all mean? Well, your guess is as good as mine.
In fact, I'm not sure it's meant to mean anything other than what you get out of it as an individual reader. After reading a brilliantly written Foreword by Al Young and an equally impressive Intro by Arun Nevader, I was ready to be blown away. Well, I wasn't. It wasn't what I expected at all in fact. Now, by some standards, this should automatically give it full marks. But on the other hand, one must wonder what is the purpose of pure 'sound poetry' if music can do it better in the first place? And that for me is the ultimate conundrum. What is the purpose of sound poetry? Is it just to delight the ear through its rhythms, assonance, alliteration and other devices? Or is it something else?
I think poetry can be both sonically interesting and also excite the reader with interesting and novel insights. Bob Kaufman's poetry is one example that comes to mind, for example.
Weighing things up, I feel that Howard Hart's poetry is an acquired taste and therefore I want to keep reading this as the poems may 'reveal themselves' more slowly over time, like a flower slowly opening its petals to the sun. Let's hope. But for now, this is a solid three stars, almost four. Slightly underwhelming but definitely one of a kind. I've never read anything quite like it.
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