Reveilles

Reveilles, Nathan Hoks’ first collection of poems, re-imagines a tempered surrealism for the twenty-first century. Hoks combines dream-like sequences with flashes of reality—in fact, rather than escaping the world for the rich pleasures of dreams, Hoks’ poems often move from the landscape of dreams into a beautiful reality. Lovely and love-struck, these fiercely witty and wildly imaginative poems—including meditations on icicles and a “listless oboist” with “no note for green”—manage to transform into love poems before our eyes. Formally various and rhetorically questioning, Hoks’ restless, death-tinged poems keep asking, “Why do I suddenly feel so sentient?”. Hoks’ speakers “like to walk / behind these prop-like thoughts” only to recognize they will soon become “the up-and-coming moss.” Fusing deadpan humor with subtle emotional registers, the “laughing angel” in this book reminds us: “The sky holds nothing to the ground.”