Hunger

by Lola Haskins

“Lola Haskins’s range is broad; her perceptions are always surprising. Natural objects surpass themselves and episodes of women’s history are rewritten in this lively, adventuresome collection.”
—Maxine Kumin

“ . . . Hunger is a cabinet of crystals each one with a cutting edge. It’s a wonder.”
—Beloit Poetry Journal

“She knows we are rooted to the earth but long for the stars. . . . And she’s wise enough to know that love searches us out. Dazzling.”
—Northwest Arkansas Times

“[The poems] richly present the experience of women, as the complexity of their material, emotional, and imaginative lives presses against the constraints of their assigned roles. . . wonderfully evocative.”
—The Hudson Review

“. . . Convincing and exquisitely visual. It plays off a painterly use of visualization and technique even as it enacts the limits of such artistry in the face of real feeling. . . . It is the clarity of Haskins’s poems and (her speakers’) observations, combined with the sometimes elegant, sometimes searing restraint with which the observations are made, that gives these poems their impact.”
—Colorado Review

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1993

Reviews

[Heather]

I really enjoyed section 4.

[Elizabeth StClair]

When I first started reading Hunger, I though the writing was a little too simplistic and lacked detail and flare. However, the further I got into it, the more I realized I was wrong. The anthology is broken into six sections, each with a different theme, and a different "voice". I enjoyed how the narrator changed from section to section. My favorite poem is below:

For Someone Considering Death

I told you.
Life is one big Hanon
up and down the piano,
five fingers skipping over each other
in ever conceivable way,
two hands getting stronger.

And sure,
the notes are the same for everyone,
but you can choose to whisper or shout,
to fade or grow.
And haven't you noticed that some people's hands sing
but others are midwestern on the keys,
each crescendo a secretarial swell.

Think about this.
How can you dream to play the Pathétique,
how can the moment come to truly look
into someone's eyes
and say, The hell with everything, I love you,
when you haven't done your time.
hour after hour, year after year,
in that small, closed room.

The last stanza says it all.

[M]

So many beauties in here.

The Very Reverend Charles Eaton (1836)

Thursday last Mary Peake fell off her horse
and lit upon her ear.
She never spoke again, died in half an hour,
the child still in her.

This night the cat got to her corps,
et off bits of her nose and chin.
The rest took wind,
and is now in all our mouths.