Synopses & Reviews
Heather McHugh's new book,
Eyeshot, is a brooding, visionary work that takes aim at the big questionsthose of love and death. The poems suggest that such immensities balance on the smallest details, and that a range of human blindness is inescapable.
The power of this new work comes from its delicate yet tenacious fidelity to the ever-unfolding senses of sense. The poems invite the reader to follow careening words and insights through passages both playful and profound. Her "Fido, Jolted by Jove" reveals the tension endemic to both language and living: "the world itself is worried." Yet the same poem remarks the high price of any reductive fix: "a brain this insecure may need another bolt be driven in it." This movement between anxiety and the human compulsion for order informs Eyeshot's darkly comic, 20/20 acuity.
Review
"...it is only in our century, in the makings of just such wizards and sibyls as McHugh... that wonder is regarded as ...that 'claim of presence to be lasting,'which is the true and proper subject of this brilliant and important poet." Boston Review
Review
Heather McHughs poems combine wit and jazzy rhythms with a daring lyric velocity... a tough intellect: playful, sarcastic, and self-critical... All of McHughs poems accelerate toward the epigram, the aphorism... Threepenny Review
Review
"Her writing is so alert to itself, so alert to language, it's like watching a dancer on a mirrored floor, stepping on her steps. She's practically playing with her words as she writes them down." Robert Hass, Washington Post Book World
Review
"All of her lines are demanding, especially her last linespuzzling yet provocative, they're like little switches that flip at the end, sending the reader back into the poet's maze of words." The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
A brooding, visionary work from a celebrated contemporary poet that takes aim at the big questions, those of love and death.
Synopsis
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (2004)
Finalist for the ForeWord magazine's Book of the Year Award (2003)
Heather McHugh's new book, Eyeshot, is a brooding, visionary work that takes aim at the big questions those of love and death. The poems suggest that such immensities balance on the smallest details, and that a range of human blindness is inescapable.
The power of this new work comes from its delicate yet tenacious fidelity to the ever-unfolding senses of sense. The poems invite the reader to follow careening words and insights through passages both playful and profound. Her "Fido, Jolted by Jove" reveals the tension endemic to both language and living: "the world itself is worried." Yet the same poem remarks the high price of any reductive fix: "a brain this insecure may need another bolt be driven in it." This movement between anxiety and the human compulsion for order informs Eyeshot's darkly comic, 20/20 acuity."