Rational Numbers

by H.L. Hix

In his second book of poetry and winner of the 2000 T. S. Eliot Prize, H. L. Hix uses two contrasting poetic sequences. "Orders of Magnitude" defies rationality in favor of invention in the musical producing a short composition that works out a single idea. As in music, the whole composition achieves its irrational effect through rational formal structure, with 100 poems, each ten lines long, with ten syllables per line. In the second sequence, "Figures," the speakers follow their "pure" rationality, though it leads them--inevitably--into the dark heart of the irrational. The result is a ledger of love and loss, a balancing of grief's books. Every reader will recognize the accounting in Rational Numbers.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

H. L. Hix has published an anthology, Wild and Whirling Words: A Poetic Conversation (2004), and eight books of poetry and literary criticism with Etruscan, including Shadows of Houses (2005), Chromatic (2006), God Bless: A Political/Poetic Discourse (2007), Legible Heavens (2008), Incident Light (2009), First Fire, Then Birds (2010), As Easy As Lying: Essays on Poetry (2002), and Lines of Inquiry (2011). He has two more books forthcoming from Etruscan, As Much As, If Not More Than (2013) and I’m Here to Learn to Dream in Your Language (2014).

In addition to having been a finalist for the National Book Award for Chromatic, his awards include the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Peregrine Smith Award, and fellowships from the NEA, the Kansas Arts Commission, and the Missouri Arts Council. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin, taught at Kansas City Art Institute, and was an administrator at The Cleveland Institute of Art, before accepting his current position as professor in the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Wyoming. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin and at Shanghai University.

Reviews

[Justin Goodman · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's something prettily technical about this collection that makes it feel breezy. A lot traditional poetic conflict between the organic and the transcendent ("Time is how the organic resists soul") emphasized by alliteration and assonance that forces the subvocal to be vocalized. Hix himself seems to be enamored with the religious aspect of this dynamic.

Much of the book itself circles around doubling - two sections, two distinct voices in section one that seem to coalesce section two - seems to be a strategy to avoid, as he refers to the flaws of Bin Laden and Bush (not randomly as his collection God Bless uses their speeches), hubris. Specifically, the "conflation of the local and global, dismissing the tension between them, pretending that the global has been absorbed into the local."

I don't think he succeeds. This book (a better word here than collection) both fails to avoid conflating the two in its second half when he, seemingly in a Teresa of Avila way conflates a transcendent ideal with a lost visceral love, and doesn't seem to say very much about its supposed titular premise: "Moral quantities cannot be expressed with mathematical precision." If you're looking for lines that strike, Rational Numbers has them. It's lyrical strugglefuck doesn't do much for the whole though, imo.

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 3 out of 5]

the second series is almost completely devoid of imagery and simile, which makes it worthless to me. relationship problems are pretty dull viewed through the lens of witty turns of phrase and imaginary dichotomies. the first series is pretty good most of the time and has a really melodic flow to the meter, but overuse of the word god (what a cheap way to smuggle meaning into a line, seriously everywhere this is used one could use a more accurate and interesting noun) and some child-like alliteration hamper it. It does have exactly 10,000 syllables, though.

[Charlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The long, middle section with shorter stanzas had beautiful, sonorous moments - but the final poems, of a much less lyrical, more confessional style, somewhat detracted from the musical language and insights of the middle part.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Form of numbers imbedded in words. What could be better.