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Animal Soul
Chosen alongside celebrated poets Louise Glück and Czeslaw Milosz, Bob Hicok’s Animal Soul was the standout surprise of the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award nominations. According to author David Wojahn, a three-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, this collection of poetry “is the best collection yet by a poet who has become one of the most individual and necessary voices of his generation. An almost prophetic rage seems to inhabit these poems, which present us with a speaker who is tender and brutally rueful by turns. Bob Hicok asks to be a voice of conscience in a conscience-less world. And, like all true prophets, his rage and consternation in the end transform themselves into a form of prayer, what one of his poems calls a ‘mad . . . devotion.’ Hicok is able to instruct and console us, and that is a very rare thing indeed.”
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
2 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
Bob Hicok
52 books94 followersBob 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 23, 2010
Bob Hicok is full of love and compassion - for grandmothers, parents, uncles, abused children, nature, sturgeon, his wife. His poems are sometimes a window into the blue-collar ordinariness of the world he used to belong to, when he owned an automotive die manufacturing business. Or he's thinking about death; "Sorting Out the Entanglements" begins, "In my will the basement goes to the spiders."
"I enjoy the image of a lawyer reading my will to the spiders."
"...Bombs are messy whereas Shop Vacs were designed
for people who fear lint and want to vacuum water."
In "A Small Blasphemy" he writes about a small child viewing a dead grandmother at her funeral:
"...hoisted, then told to say good-bye
to a lace dress wearing closed eyes."
I'm trying to find a figurative explanation for "What Fine Kindling the Homeless Make" but I think it really is about burning homeless people.
"...no two people
burn in precisely the same manner or with screams
of equally operatic worth. I remain open to possibilities.
The iron maiden may have been necessary to the development
of the PosturePedic. I might open a book at random
to a passage about St. Augustine opening a book at random."
Although, in a poem called "Critique of Pure Unreason," he seems to want to be taken figuratively:
"If I meant to be taken literally I'd have a bigger body,
better breath, the voice of a vice so the bones
of strangers would be easier to hold, easier to channel
into stocks or whatever water-sports my literal self
deems relevant for minions."
And more about death, and love, in "Did I ever tell you about my love/hate relationship with confessional poetry?":
"Even now you could ask that I imagine
a field and instead of poppies waving
blue heads I'd picture a tractor on fire,
smoke and a farmer standing back, resigned
with hands in pockets as if this too
is just a change of season. The other thing
I get wrong most of the time is caring
about people. For instance: recently blood
collected in my grandmother where blood
shouldn't, everything she said came out
like Jiffy Pop on the stove just before
the foil rips, people cried and the hospital
was a factory of indifference and I scurried
home to write a poem about death."
"I enjoy the image of a lawyer reading my will to the spiders."
"...Bombs are messy whereas Shop Vacs were designed
for people who fear lint and want to vacuum water."
In "A Small Blasphemy" he writes about a small child viewing a dead grandmother at her funeral:
"...hoisted, then told to say good-bye
to a lace dress wearing closed eyes."
I'm trying to find a figurative explanation for "What Fine Kindling the Homeless Make" but I think it really is about burning homeless people.
"...no two people
burn in precisely the same manner or with screams
of equally operatic worth. I remain open to possibilities.
The iron maiden may have been necessary to the development
of the PosturePedic. I might open a book at random
to a passage about St. Augustine opening a book at random."
Although, in a poem called "Critique of Pure Unreason," he seems to want to be taken figuratively:
"If I meant to be taken literally I'd have a bigger body,
better breath, the voice of a vice so the bones
of strangers would be easier to hold, easier to channel
into stocks or whatever water-sports my literal self
deems relevant for minions."
And more about death, and love, in "Did I ever tell you about my love/hate relationship with confessional poetry?":
"Even now you could ask that I imagine
a field and instead of poppies waving
blue heads I'd picture a tractor on fire,
smoke and a farmer standing back, resigned
with hands in pockets as if this too
is just a change of season. The other thing
I get wrong most of the time is caring
about people. For instance: recently blood
collected in my grandmother where blood
shouldn't, everything she said came out
like Jiffy Pop on the stove just before
the foil rips, people cried and the hospital
was a factory of indifference and I scurried
home to write a poem about death."
July 6, 2016
Nice collection of poems – the first I had read from this author. Suggested to me by my writing mentor. All in all an enjoyable read. A few that stuck out worth mentioning.
• “I’d go to jail for that. My dream date doesn’t begin with the question, What’cha in for boy?” – p. 7, from Sorting the Entanglements
• Pol Pot’s Class Reunion – p. 43
• 33 – p. 44
• “ I caught a sturgeon once // without bait. My uncle said // we were both stupid, one for believing // in a hook, the other for wading // shoeless into the Mississippi.” – p. 60, Book Report
• “I’d go to jail for that. My dream date doesn’t begin with the question, What’cha in for boy?” – p. 7, from Sorting the Entanglements
• Pol Pot’s Class Reunion – p. 43
• 33 – p. 44
• “ I caught a sturgeon once // without bait. My uncle said // we were both stupid, one for believing // in a hook, the other for wading // shoeless into the Mississippi.” – p. 60, Book Report
June 6, 2019
This was the book that started getting Hicok a larger audience. I was able to write something about this, and about Hicok's changing reputation back in 2002:
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
https://annarborobserver.com/articles...
June 9, 2014
May 19, 2004
A Palpable Intimacy
The thing I like most about Bob Hicok’s Animal Soul is that you can turn to any page and be enchanted by ideas, images and the indelible heart of the poet. The title is memorable and lovely— it speaks of two things—our animal nature and our spiritual essence, which points to the whole issue of human embodiment. Hicok comes to our all-too-human party, as the Guru of All Things Apparently Whimsical, but the depth of Hicok’s whims can’t be measured. He also steps onto each page as the Silent Sage of This Very Moment. Hicok invites the reader into the volume with an aptly and reverentially titled poem, “Whither Thou Goest.” The poem has a no matter whatness to it, the I in the poem has his issues and so does the unnamed thou, but through the mercy of the bond, he promises to be there, conspicuously mad in his devotion. On a provocative literary level, the poem is written to Thou, the reader, which is a pretty nice way to be greeted! Ultimately, this poet in this volume of poetry is the the foolish seeker and eloquent finder of miracles and it’s perfectly obvious he wants to tell you about all of them.
Ironically, yet appropriately, structure of this radiant volume is straightforward. A provocative, telling cover: the head of a man or a mannequin with spiral lenses in his glasses. A meaningful title. A contents page broken into four distinct sections. Sections I-III have 8 poems. Section IV has 10 poems. An appropriate epigram about an I persona trying to remember the name of an animal that sings in the water and other people making suggestions, but then I remembers Sirens, which of course, are semi-human seductresses, whose songs destroy those who seek their source. Thematically, sirens bear significant metaphoric weight because the very last line in the book is an invocation of the I to include You into not reaching for the vowel, but to give silence back. Brilliant.
A Palpable Intimacy
The thing I like most about Bob Hicok’s Animal Soul is that you can turn to any page and be enchanted by ideas, images and the indelible heart of the poet. The title is memorable and lovely— it speaks of two things—our animal nature and our spiritual essence, which points to the whole issue of human embodiment. Hicok comes to our all-too-human party, as the Guru of All Things Apparently Whimsical, but the depth of Hicok’s whims can’t be measured. He also steps onto each page as the Silent Sage of This Very Moment. Hicok invites the reader into the volume with an aptly and reverentially titled poem, “Whither Thou Goest.” The poem has a no matter whatness to it, the I in the poem has his issues and so does the unnamed thou, but through the mercy of the bond, he promises to be there, conspicuously mad in his devotion. On a provocative literary level, the poem is written to Thou, the reader, which is a pretty nice way to be greeted! Ultimately, this poet in this volume of poetry is the the foolish seeker and eloquent finder of miracles and it’s perfectly obvious he wants to tell you about all of them.
Ironically, yet appropriately, structure of this radiant volume is straightforward. A provocative, telling cover: the head of a man or a mannequin with spiral lenses in his glasses. A meaningful title. A contents page broken into four distinct sections. Sections I-III have 8 poems. Section IV has 10 poems. An appropriate epigram about an I persona trying to remember the name of an animal that sings in the water and other people making suggestions, but then I remembers Sirens, which of course, are semi-human seductresses, whose songs destroy those who seek their source. Thematically, sirens bear significant metaphoric weight because the very last line in the book is an invocation of the I to include You into not reaching for the vowel, but to give silence back. Brilliant.
March 21, 2013
Bob Hicok is the poet I wish I could be. When I wrote poetry I flipped continuously between aspiring to improve myself to some bastardized imitation of him, and lamenting that I couldn't really even do that.
What Would Freud Say remains one of my favorite contemporary poems. Who else references both Judas and Dagwood from Blondie?
What Would Freud Say remains one of my favorite contemporary poems. Who else references both Judas and Dagwood from Blondie?
Read
October 5, 2016Got to attend a craft talk, workshop and evening reading with Hicok last year and his work, excites me! His poems veer, jag and go sideways resembling a debris strewn trail of thought or the way memory returns. Dealing in a fragmented currency, the poems feel wild and surprising as if even Hicok doesn’t know where his explorations will lead.
January 22, 2011
With a couple of problematic notes, Animal Soul is otherwise an amazing contemporary poetry collection. However, Catherynne Valente's review of the collection says just about everything I could say, better. http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/6224...
August 28, 2007
Great (hard to believe it) poetry.
June 9, 2008
Powerful meditations on the monstrous as a mix of human and animal gone slightly (but not perhaps irreparably) wrong.
September 9, 2008
I finally finished this book and the poems in the last section caused me to up my rating to five stars. Yes, read this!
May 11, 2010
"Enough snow for tracks and blood, enough moon to imply / that light's everlasting, a grace of the abiding / sky."
an excerpt from, "Perpetual Resurrection"
an excerpt from, "Perpetual Resurrection"
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews