Twenty Poems That Could Save America and other essays --by Tony Hoagland

 Nonfiction / Essays on poetry

256 pages

5 Stars

 

I love good essays, and I love Tony Hoagland, uh, literarily that is. I read real sofistikashun: essays on poetry and craft by Tony Hoagland a little over two years ago and loved it. As soon as I knew this one was out, I ordered it, and promised myself I would only read one essay a night. I mostly succeeded.

 

I feel like I’ve had college-level classes on how to write poetry not just from a good teacher, but from a man who loved poetry and wanted to share his love with the world. My perception is he wanted everyone to enjoy poetry as much as he did. Out of the twelve essays, there were one or maybe two I didn’t care for all that much, a couple I loved, and the rest were merely wonderful. His enthusiasm for the craft comes through the printed word.

 

The last, and title essay had me laughing out loud in places. He was lamenting that poetry never got a really good foothold in the US schools, and will present 20 poems to take the place of some of the old standbys, but this sentence grabbed me. “Let us blame instead the stuffed shirts who took an hour to explain that poem in their classrooms, who chose it because it would NEED an explainer; pretentious ponderous ponderosas of professional professors will always be drawn to the poems that require a priest.” Yep, I think he nailed it, why a lot of us never ‘got’ into poetry until we were adulting.

 

A wonderful book, full of wisdom and explanations in plain everyday English. Even if you don’t read (or write) much poetry, I think you’d find lots to like in this book.