Bob Hicok: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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The Order of Things

 

Then I stopped hearing from you. Then I thought

I was Beethoven's cochlear implant. Then I listened

to deafness. Then I tacked a whisper

to the bulletin board. Then I liked dandelions

best in their afro stage. Then a breeze

held their soft beauty for ransom. Then no one

throws a Molotov cocktail better

than a Buddhist monk. Then the abstractions

built a tree fort. Then I stopped hearing from you.

Then I stared at my life with the back of my head.

Then an earthquake somewhere every day.

Then I felt as foolish as a flip-flop

alone on a beach. Then as a beach

alone with a sea. Then as a sea

repeating itself to the moon. Then I stopped hearing

from the moon. Then I waved. Then I threw myself

into the work of throwing myself

as far as I can. Then I picked myself up

and wondered how many of us

get around this way. Then I carried

the infinity. Then I buried the phone.

Then the ground rang. Then I answered the ground.

Then the dial tone of dirt. Then I sat on a boulder

not hearing from you. Then I did jumping jacks

not hearing from you. Then I felt-up silence. Then silence

and I went all the way.

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Bob Hicok's tenth collection, Red Rover Red Rover, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2021. Elegy Owed (Copper Canyon, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. This Clumsy Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007) was awarded the 2008 Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress. Animal Soul (Invisible Cities Press, 2001) was also finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Recipient of nine Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim and two NEA Fellowships, his poetry has been selected for inclusion in nine volumes of Best American Poetry. [For more poems by, and information on, Bob Hicok, click here.]

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                         Joseph Cornell, mixed media collage

 

 

 

 

Comments

[David Lehman]

What a wondeful opening, and then the momentum keeps building right to the end, "all the way." And I love the juxtaposition of Bob's poem with the Cornell box. Mega kudos all around.

[lally]

what david said

[Chris Mason]

Many great stories in this beautiful poem!

[clarinda harriss]

How many ways does this poem speak to me?
Let me not even try to count them.

My mind is reeling.

Answering the dirt--
Clarinda

[Grace Cavalieri]

I love Bob so much he makes me cry/ I teach his work. He said "The only risk is not taking a chance."

[Bill Nevins]

This poem makes me laugh and gives me shivers, and then I start to really feel what it is telling. Wowza! Thanks, Terence for posting and Bob for writing!!!

[Geoff Young]

Few poems using the word "then" twenty-seven times pass the rhetorical test,
but Hicok's manages to make it work, and without referring to a French philosopher
or a self-help manual. Why? Because his subject is universal, and his applications
are so exacting in their specificity, so relentless in their asperity. He gives plenty of pleasure with his pain.

[Terence Winch]

Bill---thanks for the comment.

[Maureen Owen]

Love the subtle 90 degree angles of the wandering!

[Susan Campbell]

"Then I buried the phone.

Then the ground rang. Then I answered the ground.

Then the dial tone of dirt."

Love it.

[Eileen]

Love this fantastic poem🌻

[Peter Kearney]

Terence, I am so glad to receive these poems each week together with the comments of our fellow readers. Perhaps together they are my cochlear implant that lets me hear some murmurings of the beauty that I know must be there.

[Terence Winch]

Peter---I'm so glad you are liking the poems.

[Beth]

Amazing and transforming (of this reader).

[Jack Skelley]

Now thats a killer piece of verse! Thanx Bob (& Terence) !!

[Eamon Grennan]

Wonderful wake-up call of a poem, Bob. Bravo!

[Michael]

The rhythm and voice so focused and yet carefree. Wonderful. Thanks.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Really terrific.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

The metaphor-rich, wittily associative power of Bob Hicok’s verse is amply displayed here. In one sense (yes, hearing) this is a poem of well-quarterbacked near-audibles, creating a kind of seduction through silence, with the reader's willing consent. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the poem’s last six lines. Their gravitational pull leads readers to a desired outcome: consummation. The mechanism Hicok uses is a variation of an “if-then” pattern in logic or, in this case, “then-then,” a tilted logic compelling readers to enter and navigate on his terms. And we do it excitedly to revel in how his mind and muse work, firing on all synapses as he constructs first-blush incongruities that to our eventual nonsurprise become oddly harmonized, flashing insights as we breathlessly hang on. What a bracing, brilliant ride from Bob Hicok!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Earle. With these comments I think you're planting
the seeds of a book of literary criticism essays.