Insomnia Diary

by Bob Hicok

Hicok's fluid ability to shift moods, the richness of his visual palette, and his idiosyncratic use of language fill the pages of Insomnia Diary. The fourth collection of poetry from this former automotive die designer delivers more of the cunning brilliance that has become Hicok's hallmark.

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Bob Hicok was born in 1960. His most recent collection, This Clumsy Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), was awarded the 2008 Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress. His other books are Insomnia Diary (Pitt, 2004), Animal Soul (Invisible Cities Press, 2001),a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Plus Shipping (BOA, 1998), and The Legend of Light (University of Wisconsin, 1995), which received the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry and was named a 1997 ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year. A recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, Guggenheim and two NEA Fellowships, his poetry has been selected for inclusion in five volumes of Best American Poetry.

Hicok writes poems that value speech and storytelling, that revel in the material offered by pop culture, and that deny categories such as "academic" or "narrative." As Elizabeth Gaffney wrote for the New York Times Book Review: "Each of Mr. Hicok's poems is marked by the exalted moderation of his voice—erudition without pretension, wisdom without pontification, honesty devoid of confessional melodrama. . . . His judicious eye imbues even the dreadful with beauty and meaning."

Hicok has worked as an automotive die designer and a computer system administrator, and is currently an Associate Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl]

I didn't like all these poems equally, but there's no question this man has a gift, and a way of inverting the ordinary.

On the calendar the striptease of months,
dust quietly gathering on the shoulders
of other dust...

and

I drove my father for lettuce on the day his wife
didn't die but that was reasonably his fear.
His wife is my mother which has to be stated

if facts are what we're here to collect. I often
forget whole parts of my parents' lives
have nothing to do with me...

[M.F. Soriano]

One of the best books of poetry I've read. Hicok can hit hard, but he doesn't lose himself in savagery--there's room in his attitude for sensitivity and bemusement. Often, when he does work with a bitter pen, he aims it at his own self, but even there he flavors his vinegar with compassion. Most importantly, Hicok maintains an openness to wonder and a respect for the profound that suffuses every line with a reverent hue. He is able to simultaneously mock and coddle, which is no small achievement. Plus, he does it with a wholly original voice, which leads to lines like (and this is an approximation, since I don't have a copy of the book on hand to refer to) "to huddle around the zirconium's small fire." Have you ever thought to describe a group admiring a wedding ring in that way?

[C. Varn]

Hicok's style remains deceptive: seemingly random and surreal, but often steering into the poignant or sad. The rambling is contained by a naturalistic style that can veer surreal in imaginary but is never pretentious. Some of the strongest lines here will knock your socks off, but the poems do seem to wander even after the lyrical punch is achieved.

[elise amaryllis]

5/5
i’ve been reading a ton of poetry lately and whili I still feel a little out of place when trying to review/understand it man oh man i love hicok's work. it’s kinda cool to read it at a time where i’m just now figuring out what I want from a poem. and what do i want? still not sure, but whatever hicok is doing in his stuff is great. i love the way he writes about the ordinary. i love the way he writes emotion. some of his stuff is really humorous and some is really touching and sometimes both. it’s just great. obviously some poems were a miss for me but i loved most of the poems in here, and even poems i didn’t like had some beautiful lines. this book also feels almost conversational, reads like a story at some points (idk what I’m saying but it makes sense in my head) and i’m just a big fan.

not quoted, but I also loved “the bald truth” “spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone” & “insomnia diary”

some of my favorite poems & lines:

“That was the day I learned you can sit
with someone who’s on the bottom
of the ocean and not get wet.
By the time he said things were good
he’d poured twelve sugars into a coffee
he never touched.”

— Bottom of the ocean

“I drove my father for lettuce on the day his wife
didn’t die but that was reasonably his fear.
His wife is my mother which has to be stated

if facts are what we’re here to collect. I often
forget whole parts of my parents’ lives
have nothing to do with me.”

— Small purchase

“Happiness is the technical term
for what ensued, a week of touching
and talking and sweeping the floors

together and how wonderful it can be
to take out the trash, the only weight
he felt were his socks, without them

he’d have floated off, he almost believed
this was the feeling he’d carry
to his grave, that lips and fingerprints

are wealth.”

— Capital crime

“I want to remember
the first time I heard music and knew
I was hearing music, and the first time
I heard music and had no idea what it was.”

— Now and then I am direct

“I remember things about eight
That might be relevant here
like not remembering anything about eight.

I’ve seen pictures. I had
exploding hair and must have loved
the earth because I wore dirt
to every occasion.

Hiding should be the career of a child
Breaking things
is good or licking rocks.”

— Growing at the speed of fashion

“But what sadness
pushes stars to suicide? In truth
they’re rocks, we call them stars
to speak kinda of the dead.”

— Meteor shower

“He got the last pizza
at lunch and was touched on the wrist by a girl
at the fountain. This made him believe he was real
in a way breathing never had. Over the next
few months he stopped feeling he lived
on the wrong side of the mirror.”

— The edge

“I was happier sweating
because it proves the body’s made of rain.
I was happier hallucinating a beach

because I’m a better man
in the presence of a water slide.”

— Cure for the common cold

[Courtney LeBlanc]

from Small purchase: "In / the exhaustion of that image he walked to my car / through the potpourri of lilac and redbud, // shoulder-slumped but expressing gratitude / for the trees that make a seductress of air."

from My life with a gardener: "I see her, / she's the last green thing I need. / When finally she's pushed inside / by the rude hands of dusk, / I set down my life for her skin, / taught all day how to smell / like the sun, and the hundred / directions of her hair, and eyes / that look through me to flowers / that only open their mouths / to speak with the moon."

from The bald truth: "My hair went on a diet of its own accord. / Rogaine is the extent of my vanity. / It didn't work but it was fun / treating my head with fertilizer / as if it were a phrenologist's lawn."

[Elliot]

I love poetry and I’d like to think that poetry loves me too.

Excerpt from ‘Another Awkward Stage of Convalescence’

“… I told her
I was over her by pretending I was just
a friend calling to say the snowdrops
had nuzzled through dirt to shake
their bells in April wind. This
threw her off the scent of my anguish

as did the cement mixer of my voice, as did
the long pause during which I memorized
her breathing and stared at my toes
like we were still together, reading
until our eyes slid from the page
and books fell off the bed to pound

their applause as our tongues searched
each others’ bodies.”

[Richard]

Hicock’s poems are a jigger of James Tate with a sprinkling of Donald Barthelme. Some poems engage their conceit in the title, perhaps even before the title, leaving you sometimes with a wondrous sense of imbalance, clutching at the world of the poem to make sense of where you are. But these poems don’t really go to the length of absurdity, unless the world around us is absurd (a fair point). In a poem about public work, for example, a public figure expects a bribe to move a rock back from the side of the road that someone intends to move it from, making for a classic catch-22 of expecting a bribe for work that is not only not yet done, but A bribe for work not to be done in the first place. There are also poems of love in here, of anguish, so there are a few I will be coming back to, but sometimes that aforementioned wall just remains there through the poem.

[G.J. Fricano]

Not my favorite of his collections, but still a worthwhile venture into Hicok's bizarre reflections of life and sex.

[Linda]

Mixed. Loved some of the poems; others didn't work for me.

[Sheri Fresonke Harper]

Bob Hicok's style tends toward a burst of words that is close to a rant but I would say it was more full of emotional vigor. The pieces focus on unusual times, places, and connections in his life. Some of the pieces are quite funny. Two poems tell of having to layoff and rehire a man in all the emotional turmoil that generates between the boss and employee, for example. The fun part of these poems is the slice of American life that comes out clearly in the reading. I could only read a few at a time because they spun off too many thoughts, definitely a good find for poets and readers for their keep shelf.

[Mark]

I had read many Hicok poems before picking up Insomnia Diary and have always really liked his work. For anyone unfamiliar with Hicok, he has a witty, conversational style that belies the surprising depth of his lyrical insights. Unfortunately, Insomnia Diary shows what a thin line such a style treads between accessible inspriration and amateurish rhythmic talking. Although there were several good poems in the volume, there were also several not so good ones that wore on your nerves after a while (very similar to reading bad Bukowski). I highly recommend Bob Hicok, but I also recommend starting with a different volume.

[Gina]

A "few" favorite lines:

"[I]f I give a job to one stomach other/forks are naked."--"Calling him back from layoff"

"All the while feeling air's/a quilt of tongues, that spaces/between words are more articulate/than words."--"Bars poetica"

"But what sadness/pushes stars to suicide? In truth/they're rocks, we call them stars/to speak kindly of the dead."--"Meteor shower"

And what I need printed on something or at least on hand to quote in the future:

"My contribution/to the common good is playing/with the alphabet in a little room/while the world goes foraging/for food."--"Truth about love"

[P.]

Bob Hicok's poetry caught me in the Believer magazine and the New Yorker. It was really arresting. So I was looking forward to reading a book of it. And this was more staid than I was expecting. But I'm thinking maybe this is earlier work, because there are hints of Things To Come.

Not that this is a terrible collection. Just that these poems sit on the page and wait to be read and my favorites of his rush along and carry you with them.

[Joanna]

Hicok's poem "Bottom of the Ocean" is knock-the-wind-out-of-me good. I think of the lines: "He said that she said /we're all out of evers without explaining /who she was or how many evers we had /to begin with or where they were kept. /I slept with an extra blanket that night." pretty much every single day.

[Taylor]

God does this man have a way with words. A poem about growing bald, a poem about parents dying, dogs dying, every little mundane thing, and less mundane things, that come along with middle age. I'm not there yet, and I doubt that when I am that I will be able to make it beautiful the way Hicok has.

[Autumn]

My new favorite poet.

I enjoy poetry that is technically masterful and shows a clear gift with language without the "look at me showing off my 12 English degrees!" kind of convoluted snobbery. Hicok is it--approachable, relatable, and just plain fun to read. It deals with heavy themes with the perfect amount of bemusement and self-depreciation. I would recommend this word porn to everyone.

[James]

"It's hard being in love
with fireflies. I have to do
all the pots and pans."

Funny poems, lots of good energy from the line breaks, most are big single-stanza things, the voice starts to sound a little samey-samey.

[Msryanpaula]

Come on people, read some poetry. You're not well-read without it!

[Sara Kearns]

There is so much humanity in Bob Hicok's books. Sooo much. I bow before him and worship at his alter daily. He's brilliant -- intellectually, linguistically, and emotionally.

[Timothy]

Good poetry collection. Speaks of his past life as a drug user/dealer among other ideas (the workplace, being old). Reminds me a bit of Dean Young. Good read.

[Simona]

whimsical, clever and downright reverent in places, without being too heavy-handed.

[Eddie Watkins]

Good enough but maybe he should prose it instead

[Deja Bertucci]

Good, readable poems.

[Sara]

The language in this book, the use of words, is sometimes magical, in that it seems effortless, as if it is a given yet, totally new to the brain.

[Timothy Green]

One of my favorite books.