Words For Empty And Words For Full (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
I've read some Hicok before, and generally like him, though I thought his last book wasn't as good as people led me to believe (sorry, Caroline). But this one is all that and more-- dynamic and lyrical while still being grounded in the human experience and Hicok's own admitted failings, these poems are serious but still playful, committed without being ponderous, and investigations that don't feel dippy.The subject of the poems here, by and large, seem to be the War, and coterminous with that, the state of the Nation-- these are political poems, and political poems of the end of the Bush years and the start, the very start of the Obama-nation. It's sometimes just bracing to hear someone articulate what you already feel, and a small part of my enthusiasm might be attributable to that.But the poems themselves also have a lot to recommend them: there are a group of them, from the early sections, especially, that play with syntax, cutting and splicing phrases in ways that are dizzyingly inventive, playing with what slips between the cracks of the words we pile up like banana boxes. But it's not like that's all these poems do, because that'd get boring, too, after a while.The book also has a section of poems on the VaTech shooter, who apparently was a student in Hicok's writing class; I remember hearing from Nikki Giovanni around this subject at the time, but I can readily believe it was really Hicok who worked with Cho. The poems are interesting, and smart, and also have a certain rubber-necker appeal. They are challenging to our sense of what happened and how we should feel, and that feels productive when you read them. But I feel, too, that the section, and the experience, doesn't really resolve; it's not a major flow; it's a hard experience to process, I'm sure. But breaking all those poems into their own section, and ending that section, creates an expectation of completing that I don't think the suite of poems fully achieves.Still, a fun read full of compelling poems I'd gladly spend more time with. i don't know if this is relevant to the specific collection itself, but i learned, while reading hicok, that i respond very well to reading poetry out loud to myself. i'm very grateful for this realization. with that said, almost every poem affected me in some way, though i found the collection to be somewhat disjointed as a whole. at any rate, i need to find someone to read to other than my cats.
What do You think about Words For Empty And Words For Full (2010)?
I usually love a variety of poetry. This however, was terribly disconnected, rambling, and inane.
—Thays
Pretentiously written. High school level word play. Post-modern bullshit.
—karen
Another fantastic collection by Hicok. He is one of my favorite poets.
—elaine_drewyor
