What we know for sure is that metaphor is the raw uranium of poetry, and that an urge to say that one thing is like something else is one of the earliest markers of the poetic spirit, the nascent poet. — Tony Hoagland Copy Share Image
“Until we say the truth, there can be no tenderness. As long as there is desire, we will not be safe” — Tony Hoagland Copy Share Image
“The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness— and hope moving from one location to another like the holy ghost that… — tony hoagland Copy Share Image
These poems possess intelligence, erudition, gravitas and urgency. Serious and moving in voice and ambition, this passionately lyrical and articulate work reminds me very… — Tony Hoagland Copy Share Image
“So the avenues we walk down, full of bodies wearing faces, are full of hidden talent: enough to make pianos moan, sidewalks split, streetlights… — Tony Hoagland Copy Share Image
There’s Socialism and Communism and Capitalism and there’s Feminism and Hedonism, and there’s Catholicism and Bipedalism and Consumerism, but I think Narcissism is the… — Tony Hoagland Copy Share Image
So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million… — Tony Hoagland Copy Share
“There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack that should have been bagged in double layers —so that before you are even out the door you feel the weight of the jug dragging the bag down, stretching the thin plastic handles longer and longer and you know… — Tony Hoagland Copy Share
“the glory of the protagonist is always paid for by a lot of secondary characters” — Tony Hoagland Copy Share Image
“Because if marriage is a kind of womb, divorce is the being born again.” — Tony Hoagland Copy Share Image
“I know there are some people out there who think I am supposed to end up in a room by myself with a gun and a bottle full of hate, a locked door and my slack mouth open like a disconnected phone. But I hate those people back from the core of my donkey soul and the hatred makes me… — Tony Hoagland Copy Share
No matter how you feel you have to act like you are very popular with yourself; very relaxed and purposeful very unconfused and not… — Tony Hoagland Copy Share Image
