Tony Hoagland, “Field Guide”

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Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then it, and rested.
That’s all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty is the fourth collection from Tony Hoagland. Other poems in this book include “At the Galleria Shopping Mall” (since retitled “At the Galleria”) and “Personal” (from Poetry), “Confinement” (from Slate), and “Romantic Moment,” which Hoagland read at the 2006 Dodge Poetry Festival.

“I think that I got deeper and deeper into the world of poetry simply because it was the only thing that stayed constant in my life continuously, year after year, and then decade after decade,” Hoagland told an interviewer during that same festival. “I couldn’t seem to sustain continuity in any of the other typical realms of life: in relationships, in education, and the idea of a career path was simply laughable to me. But poetry was always there, and I remained engaged in reading it… Poetry—poems themselves—became a culture for me, a culture that I carried with me.”

19 January 2010 | poetry |