This Clumsy Living - Award-Winning Poetry Collection | Pitt Poetry Series | Perfect for Book Clubs & Literary Enthusiasts

In This Clumsy Living, Bob Hicok invites us into the world of his mind, and by extension, our own. The mind is not a structured, wholly predictable set of equations and patterns, and neither is Hicok's work. Each poem has its own unique feel, structure and sound. Sometimes the piece is rooted in a deep, universal emotion, like "In Michael Robins's class minus one," a poem that explores reactions to a student's drowning in a conversation between students and the river. Sometimes a poem builds on repetition and rhythm to humorously examine a very human moment. "My new neighbor" states: "I wondered if the congregation of flies / on the eye of the cow / stared at the eye of the cow / with their compound eyes," then grows into a rumination on connections: "It is comforting to talk / to large animals, whether they listen or not. / I said, it is comforting to talk to large animals, / whether they listen or not." At times, Hicok loses all poetic form, letting the poetry of the words stand on their own, in prose pieces like "A letter: the Genesis poem" and "Documenting a decision." He also highly complicates forms, as in "A poem with a poem in its belly," which features a long prose poem literally structured around a smaller, lineated piece. In all of the poems, though, the one constant is Hicok - his voice, his ideas, his ability to give deep meaning and connection to images that are, without his deft touch, completely illogical. This is not a collection of experiments and oddities; this is a collection that captures the state of poetry, and in effect, the essence of society. When the landscape of poetry seems wild and unfocused, as it does in this time without dominant schools of writers, and when the world at large seems chaotic and senseless, Hicok shows us that meaning and power comes from the individual.