Insomnia Diary

by Bob Hicok

Overview

Bob Hicok's poems are often edgy, brazen, and funny. They’re just as likely to be soulful, reflective, and provocative. Usually at the same time. As Hicok builds toward the punchline of a poem set up with his characteristic wit, he zigs into seriousness. A thoughtful meditation that builds to a moment of epiphany zags into comedy. 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822990925
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	03/14/2004
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	225 KB

About the Author

Bob Hicok is associate professor of English at Virginia Tech University. He is the author of This Clumsy Living, Insomnia Diary, Animal Soul (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Plus Shipping, and The Legend of Light. Hicok is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA Fellowships, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Poetry Prize from the Library of Congress, the Felix Pollak Prize, the Jerome J. Shestack Prize, and four Pushcart Prizes. His poems have appeared in five volumes of Best American Poetry.

Table of Contents

Contents Bottom of the ocean Small purchase The semantics of flowers on Memorial Day Dropping the euphemism Calling him back from layoff My life with a gardener An old story The documentary art Becoming bird Another awkward stage of convalescence The bald truth After working sixty hours again for what reason Oath to my former life Spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone Insomnia diary Go Greyhound Finally opening the anthology to Kunitz Free-floating anxiety sounds like a pretty balloon Tuesday’s walk 1935 American Studies Sur Coast diary Capital crime Now and then I am direct Growing at the speed of fashion Bars poetica Translator’s note Echo Mortal shower Meteor shower Building a painting a home Commission by attrition Goodbye in the shape of a knot The edge Radical neck It’s not so much the heat as the stupidity Cure for the common cold Cutting edge Truth about love Shopping at the ocean Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

#8230; ultimately the most potent ingredient in virtually every one of Bob Hicok's compact, well-turned poems is a laughter as old as humanity itself, a sweet waggery that suggests there's almost no problem that can't be solved by this poet's gentle humor. — David Kirby

The New York Times

The most potent ingredient in virtually every one of Bob Hicok's compact, well-turned poems is a laughter as old as humanity itself, a sweet waggery that suggests there's almost no problem that can't be solved by this poet's gentle humor.

New York Times Book Review

The sophisticated jester of these soliloquies, dumbfounded by the simplicity and complexity of life, is on a hang glider headed straight for Olympus.

Mary Ruefle

Hicok is funny as hell, in Blake's sense of the infernal: irreverent, anarchic, undeceived. His bracing ill humor is a vehicle for outrage, longing, tenderness, and a sly cynicism that is the necessary counterbalance to a tenacious sense of hope. He is one of our premiere anatomists of contemporary American life, and a wildly refreshing, necessary poet.

Mark Doty

Hicok comes across as the smart, quiet guy in school that everybody listens to. The language is everywhere dynamic, varied, and surprising. And most surprising of all, there seems not to be a weak line in the entire book.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

[Hicok] writes with an honest man's happy discontent. . . . His poems stand on that inconvenient ground where the absurd and romantic visions battle for the voice and transmit the full joyful and afflicted human creature. He is one of the finest poets to have emerged in the last ten years.

Rodney Jones

In Insomnia Diary. . . the poet's characteristically clever turns of phrase and self-depreciating humor are complemented by an added tenderness in both tone and subject matter. . . . It is Hicok's ability to combine lyrical moments with statements of simple truth that gives Insomnia Diary its strength.

Third Coast

Hicok's style is so vivid, so wonderfully glib, that despite his theme or focus, what we admire about him isn't what he writes about, but the way he writes about it. . . . The one thing I've always liked about all of Bob Hicok's poetry is the way he shocks and muses, throws the reader back on his or her feet, makes him or her smile, and pulls us all into the absurdity of his poetic conceits. . . an admirable an talented poet.

Mid-American Review

In his fourth collection, Hicok writes with a newfound maturity and an appealing lack of obsession with self, examining the joys and pains (mostly pains) of ordinary others.

Publishers Weekly

The most potent ingredient in virtually every one of bob Hicok’s compact, well-turned poems is a laughter as old as humanity itself, a sweet waggery that suggests there’s almost no problem that can’t be solved by this poet’s gentle humor.”
—New York Times Book Review



“In his fourth collection, Hicok writes with a newfound maturity and an appealing lack of obsession with self, examining the joys and pains (mostly pains) of ordinary others. “
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher