H. L. Hix - Böcker

Explores the consequences of postmodern theory and answers the question, "What did postmodern theory begin?"In a series of topical explorations structured like a sonata, H. L. Hix identifies the consequences of postmodern theory through such issues as grief, freedom, beauty, obscenity, love, and sex to its axiological consequences. A basic motif, postmodernism's distribution of meaning over space rather than time, recurs throughout the chapters, each of which in some way amplifies the book's underlying theme, virtue. The "exposition" of the theme in the first ten chapters receives its "development" in the chapter, "Postmodern Virtue," and its "recapitulation" in the aphorisms of the final chapter.By choosing names like "deconstruction," postmodern theory postures as that which shakes foundations. But any declaration of an end is also a declaration of a beginning, and Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes pushes past the posturing to ask what foundations postmodern theory has laid.

H L Hix’s poetry collections have not been merely collections. Each fulfils a vision that creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts: each poem contributes to a sequence, each sequence talks to another. For readers already acquainted with Hix’s ambitions, then, the subtitle “Obsessionals” (instead of “Selected Poems”) will need no explanation: from collections that don’t just collect, what sense would it make for a selection just to select?Hix’s poems were already at work rewriting and recontextualizing the language of others, language from sources as various as fragments of Pythagoras, apocryphal gospels, and speeches of George W. Bush. In First Fire, Then Birds, Hix keeps at the task, recontextualizing his own poems, creating a revision (seeing anew) and recomposition (putting together afresh) of an already distinctive body of work.

Presents work by poets of three generations: William Heyen, H.L. Hix, and Dante Di Stefano. It was Di Stefano’s new book, Lullaby with Incendiary Device, which inspired this tribute to three generations. Lullaby is deeply immersed in a soon-to-be-realised future, in which Di Stefano’s daughter faces an array of 21st century challenges. For the last half-century, Heyen’s poetry has explored world history, from Nature, to Native Americans, to the Holocaust and the atom bomb, the Iraq Wars, to the British Royals. In this book, Heyen presents another entry into his Holocaust opus, The Nazi Patrol. H.L. Hix’s work is also inextricably involved with the world as seen in a recent collection, American Anger, which explores the psychology of rage underneath recent political turmoil, yet it also turns inward, creating new forms to join the world and the inner life. This theme is most prominent here, in How It Is That We.

Ley lines mark alignments of sacred sites such as ridgetops and ancient megaliths and create pathways between them. This book too marks alignments and creates pathways, but its sacred sites are not monuments, they're artworks and poems. Its various forms of exchange between writers and artists offer unique access to contemporary art, poetry, and the creative process. In this unique anthology, working poets respond to questions about their recent books, painters and other artists offer statements about their work, and writers respond to artworks. These offerings and exchanges are juxtaposed so as to speak to one another in a capacious, resonant dialogue. The result is a broad-minded and inclusive poetics, a vision of creative work as a constituent of personal and civic life. Anyone who nurtures the creative impulse will enjoy Ley Lines and return to it again and again. Writing students, art students, and any reader engaged in artistic practice will find in Ley Lines not a how-to manual or step-by-step instruction but an inexhaustible vein of instructive reflection on imaginative work and the creative life.