James Hoch Q&A on a poem he wishes he’d written
James Hoch talks about a poem he wishes he’d written, Ben Jonson’s “On My First Son.”
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James Hoch
Prior to teaching, James Hoch was dishwasher, cook, dockworker, social worker and shepherd. His poems have appeared in Slate, The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ninth Letter, Carolina Quarterly, The Virginia Quarterly Review and many others. They have been nominated many times for the Pushcart Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from […]
For Llamas
If you want to understand the beauty of llamas you have to struggle with the dead. You have to slip your arms beneath their ribs, lock your hands together and stagger with them across a concrete floor out into cold wind, through thistles, brown and brittle cheet grass, your head against their collarbone your face […]
His Voice Had Grown Softer Each Day
I need you to get me a ticket, he said. For what, I asked, waking at the foot of his bed. For the train, he said. They say I need a ticket. Except for the small lamp the room was dark. The air was cool and clear. The first night of September. Do you know […]
Near the Heart of Happening
The foal hangs halfway out and the mare strains but can’t push anymore. I bring a bucket of cold river water across the field. Haboo I say in her ear, what the Skagit children said when the storyteller stopped: keep the story going. They said it with clamor, with hands and voices louder each time […]
Come You White Mare, Come Striding
In the hour before birds In the naming of a few stars In a few leaves fallen In ash, ember, Come— In the splick, splick of a water trough For in this late month— I hear so clearly for the first time Crickets, the weeds— In mist seeping in from the river In field, in […]
In the Ghost-House Acquainted
I close the simple flowers and bid the moon now rise for Death is not my harbor. And I walk among derelict combines that they might know and come unafraid. In mulberry small birds sleep. Hornets enter one by one the districts of their hidden city. A fence dissolves. Reappears. Oaks lean into the darkness, […]
Between Brightness and Weight
Frost on the white barn but not on the red. Frost on alder more white than on thistle and dung. Against snow in the pasture where I walk clicking my tongue among many sparrows rising. Between brightness and weight. How in trees wind turns air silver. Ice on the water trough, ewes breathing against it. […]