Viridian

by Paul Hoover

Viridian is Paul Hoover's sixth collection of poetry and the first since his book-length work The A Poem was published in 1990. While The A Poem dealt with the dilemma of postmodern authorship, the poems in Viridian are conceptual pieces varied in style and subject matter.
The poems in the first of three sections comment on the world through language and simultaneously explore how subject matter, from baseball to death to highway signs, is transformed by language. The middle section consists of longer poems in which meaning emerges through a filter of language. In the final and most lyrical section, several poems are based on Hoover's screenplay for Joseph Ramirez's 1994 independent film, Viridian. Many of these poems were used as voice-overs for the film's main character, a single mother searching for permanence. Their language is incantatory, as if poetry could fix a place for her in the world.

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I have been most interested in lately is the building quality of poems. How they can start with this one impulse and then walk around and around that impulse until they have led to the most unlikely place. With the Hoover I see it happen over the course of this book. With the first few poems he teaches me about a multiplicity of perspective that can open out and out, and then his poems become that kaleidescope. So that the end poems like "Great Expectations" or "The Garden" are surging with images and associations. HELLO!

[Nicky Enriquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Windows of time and notes of history in florid, meandering words. Often a bit over my head, if I'm being truthful, but lovely nonetheless.