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Darkening Water: Poems
" A major work, a record of our era," wrote Maxine Kumin in awarding the Paterson Poetry Prize to Hang-Gliding from Helicon, Daniel Hoffman's selected poems a dozen years ago. Of Darkening Water, his first collection since then, Fred Chappell observes, "These poems have all the poet's familiar virtues-clarity, grace where desired, accuracy of detail and of dialogue, and a formal mastery so deft that playfulness comes easily. Hoffman's dominant theme lies in the contrast (and often the necessary balance) between the primal, ancient, legendary strains of our culture and the new-fangled, distracting, but genuine imperatives of contemporaneity. Hoffman uses older forms and traditions to make something new and durable." The range of Hoffman's sensibility includes the primordial sludge from which life emerged and the coin-filled fountain of a suburban shopping mall, an enduring New England garden and the dancing woman in an ancient cave. His luminous poems create memorable characters, exploring man's relationship to nature and to time. Seemingly effortless juxtapositions create rewarding surprises. This refined collection by one of our finest poets reverberates with intelligence, close observation, and a deep respect for the possibilities of language. It is a treasure for Hoffman's many longtime readers as well as for those discovering his work for the first time.
64 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2002
About the author
Daniel Hoffman
69 books7 followersDaniel Hoffman served as Poet Laureate in 1973-74 (when the post was known as Consultant in Poetry of The Library of Congress). His first book, An Armada of Thirty Whales, was W. H. Auden's choice for the 1954 Yale Series of Younger Poets. Among its dozen successor volumes are Brotherly Love (1981), a nominee for both the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award; Beyond Silence: Selected Shorter Poems 1948-2003; and The Whole Nine Yards: Longer Poems (2009).
Best known of his critical studies is another National Book Award nominee, Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe (1972).
Among his distinctions, Hoffman received the Arthur Rense prize for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005, and, in 2003 from The Sewanee Review, the Aiken-Taylor Award for Contemporary American Poetry. He was given the Memorial medal of the Magyar P.E.N. for his translations of contemporary Hungarian poets.
Born in 1923 in New York City, Daniel Hoffman in 1948 married the poet and editor Elizabeth McFarland (d. 2005). They had two children. He took three degrees from Columbia, and taught there, at Swarthmore College, and at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he retired in 1993 as the Felix E. Schelling Professor of English Emeritus. From 1988-99 he was Poet in Residence, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and administered the American Poets' Corner. He lives in Swarthmore, PA, and on Cape Rosier in Maine.
Best known of his critical studies is another National Book Award nominee, Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe (1972).
Among his distinctions, Hoffman received the Arthur Rense prize for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005, and, in 2003 from The Sewanee Review, the Aiken-Taylor Award for Contemporary American Poetry. He was given the Memorial medal of the Magyar P.E.N. for his translations of contemporary Hungarian poets.
Born in 1923 in New York City, Daniel Hoffman in 1948 married the poet and editor Elizabeth McFarland (d. 2005). They had two children. He took three degrees from Columbia, and taught there, at Swarthmore College, and at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he retired in 1993 as the Felix E. Schelling Professor of English Emeritus. From 1988-99 he was Poet in Residence, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and administered the American Poets' Corner. He lives in Swarthmore, PA, and on Cape Rosier in Maine.
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