Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty Poems

The new poetry collection by Tony Hoagland, the award-winning author ofWhat Narcissim Means To MeandDonkey Gospel InUnincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, Tony Hoagland is deep inside a republic that no longer offers reliable signage, in which comfort and suffering are intimately entwined, and whose citizens gasp for oxygen without knowing why. With Hoagland's trademark humor and social commentary, these poems are exhilarating for their fierce moral curiosity, their desire to name the truth, and their celebration of the resilience of human nature.

Tony Hoagland is the author of three previous poetry collections, including What Narcissism Means to Me and Donkey Gospel, and a collection of essays, Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft. He teaches at the University of Houston.

I too am made of joists and stanchions, of plasterboard and temperamental steel, mortgage payments and severed index fingers, ex-girlfriends and secret Kool-Aid-flavored dawns. —from “Demolition” “It’s hard to imagine any aspect of contemporary American life that couldn’t make its way into the writing of Tony Hoagland or a word in common or formal usage he would shy away from. He is a poet of risk: he risks wild laughter in poems that are totally heartfelt, poems you want to read out loud to anyone who needs to know the score and even more so to those who think they know the score. The framework of his writing is immense, almost as large as the tarnished nation he wandered into under the star of poetry.” —Jackson Poetry Prize judges’ citation