Ocean of Clouds Poems

In his fourth book of poems, award-winning poet Garrett Hongo sees coastlines and waters, skylines and ancestral lines for what they inspire and teach

In a surpassingly beautiful collection of poems, with his characteristic long-lined, rolling music, Hongo is alert to the possibilities of individual moments of perception and grace in the landscapes of his life, whether waiting for a ferry in Balboa after a writing workshop (“an oil slick from a yacht . . . /Spread rainbows on the water, an aleph / curving towards us”) or hanging out and playing LPs with the late great poet Michael Harper, or watching his daughter in the sun with a halo of messy 12-year-old hair, or listening to the sea, which speaks to him in so many places: at the Waiʻopae Tidepools, at Cassis, at Divi Bay in Saint Martin, where, he tells us, “I thought of writing to the soul of Nazim Hikmet, / saying loving a woman was like writing a book—/...it is loveʻs body on which you write a page of kisses…”
    These poems of cloudy moons and sandstone cliffsides, the black glass of lava shattered into sands, waves surging, and stories of a poet’s gratitude for the journey he has made, come together to make a paean against forgetting.

GARRETT HONGO was born in Volcano, Hawaiʻi, and grew up on the North Shore of Oʻahu and in Los Angeles. His most recent books are The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo, The Mirror Diary: Selected Essays, and Coral Road: Poems. He has been the recipient of several awards, including fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. Hongo lives in Eugene, Oregon, and teaches at the University of Oregon, where he is Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences.