Your Wednesday Morning Poetry

In light of the holiday weekend America just had--not to mention the year it's had--here's one of the first Tony Hoagland poems I've ever read. "My Country" is from his first book, Sweet Ruin and is republished courtesy of the site Voetica.

Your Wednesday Morning Poetry

By next Wednesday, summer will be gone. Let's start to say bye with what I feel to be the quintessential summer poem. It's courtesy of Poetry Foundation, though I remember this being published in the Winter 1994-95 issue of Ploughshares and reading it back when I was a graduate student at Emerson College. 

It's amazing that a poem can make you nostalgic for a kind of summer you never really had.

RIP Tony Hoagland

If it could ever be said that I had a bucket list, one of the items would have been to send him a copy of one of my chapbooks, just to get his feedback. That I never did is a going to go down as a big personal regret.

I was blessed enough to have Alan Feldman share Hoagland's work in his class. I tracked down his book Sweet Ruin and saw the best work in his Donkey Gospel collection appear first in Ploughshares. 

I know he had views that were controversial. The controversy almost seems quaint compared to the discourse of today.

Tell you what, hipster activist: You don't bring this up now, and I won't bring up how you once read "When Dean Young Talks About Wine" on an open mic to intentionally piss off another older person.

Thank you for everything, Mr. Hoagland.