Turn Up the Ocean: Poems

by Tony Hoagland

Overview

The final book of poems by Tony Hoagland, “one of the most distinctive voices of our time” (Carl Dennis).

Over the course of his celebrated career, Tony Hoagland ventured fearlessly into the unlit alleys of emotion and experience. The poems in Turn Up the Ocean examine with an unflinching eye and mordant humor the reality of living and dying in a time and culture that conspire to erase our inner lives. Hoagland’s signature wit and unparalleled observations take in long-standing injustices, the atrocities of American empire and consumerism, and our ongoing habit of looking away. In these poems, perseverance depends on a gymnastics of skepticism and comedy, a dogged quest for authentic connection, and the consolations of the natural world. Turn Up the Ocean is a remarkable and moving collection, a fitting testament to Hoagland’s devotion to the capaciousness and art of poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644450925
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	07/12/2022
Pages:	80
Sales rank:	515,394
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Tony Hoagland (1953–2018) was the award-winning author of seven books of poetry, including Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God and What Narcissism Means to Me, and four books about poetry, including Twenty Poems That Could Save America.

Table of Contents

Bible All Out of Order 3

Gorgon 5

Immersion 7

Disclosure Agreement 9

Botany 11

Why I Like the Hospital 13

Squad Car Light 15

Turn Up the Ocean 17

The Reason He Brought His Gun to School: A Blues 19

Butter 21

Diagnosis 23

Nature Is Strong 25

Illness and Literature 27

"On a Scale of 1-10," Said the Nurse, "How Would You Rate Your Pain Today?" 28

Bandage 30

American Story 32

Ode to the West Wind 35

How the Old Poetry Happened 36

I Don't Ask What You're Thinking 38

Causes of Death 40

Virginia Woolf 42

Four Beginnings for an Apocalyptic Novel of Manners 44

The Power of Traffic 46

Weather of Pain 48

Autumn 50

On Why I Must Decline to Receive the Prayers You Say You Are Constantly Sending 51

Mistaken Identity Librarian Syndrome 53

Landscape without Jason 55

Walk 56

Success 57

Dante's Bar and Grill 59

King of the Night 61

Siberia 62

Economica 64

The Decline of the Roman Empire 65

Cuisine 66

The Interfaith Chapel Is in the South Terminal 68

Homework 70

Reading While Sick in the Middle of the Night 71

Harbor 72

Incompletion 73

Sunday at the Mall 74

Among the Intellectuals 76

In the Beautiful Rain 77

Peaceful Transition 79

Afterword Kathleen Lee 83

Editorial Reviews

08/01/2022

Assembled by his wife after his death in 2018, the poems in Hoagland's eighth and final collection (after Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God) were written in the shadow of incurable cancer ("the Ellis Island of the hospital waiting room"), but that did not diminish the poet's characteristic candor and trenchant wit. Aphoristically and at times acerbically philosophical ("pain doesn't speak/ in complete sentences"; "Belief is not a requirement to go on living"), Hoagland recognized the insufficiency of learned hopelessness while acknowledging that the mechanisms of the outer world (natural disasters, fatal illnesses, global capitalism) lie beyond individual human control. To live is to experience randomness, a series "of unpredictable patterns/ in human weather," but for a poet the urge to explore "how to say/ these thousand mysteries that we live among" is reason enough to go on living. VERDICT Hoagland's poetry earns the oft-misused adjective uncompromising for its directness in the face of reality's "blithering whirlwind of wonder." Though one wishes his life had not ended so soon, this collection will stand as a fitting capstone to a stellar poetic career.—Fred Muratori

Library Journal