Poems in Spanish

by Paul Hoover

At once rhythmically charged and stilled by the silences, Paul Hoover's Poems in Spanish takes the English language into fraternity with the haunting lyricism of Spanish, and in this way pays tribute to the great poets writing in the Ibero Hispanic tradition of the 20th century-among them Pessoa, Lorca, Vallejo, Andrade, Neruda, Sabines. Poems in Spanish is a collection written in English, but it is an English that surprises with its sharply etched and yet resonant cadences. Hoover's achievement reminds us that we often must hear our own voice translated through other mediums before we can receive it most accurately, and before we can recognize most truthfully its sounding of our own deepest sensibilities. Hoover's poems include as their subjects the ethics of interpersonal relations, the social identity's conflicted relationship to self discovery, and the family bounds which function as a frame that both supports and limits our potential. Yet, just as we have come to see in Hoover's previous collections, this poet is equally interested in using subject matter's representation of event to examine what is occluded by the event of representation. These poems demonstrate how a reader can find in poetry a source of pleasure-for the ear, the heart, and imagination.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Martin Ott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good book - second half is a bit uneven, the only thing keeping me from 5 stars. Recommend!

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Paul Hoover, I've read poems in Spanish. Poems in Spanish were my friends. Mr. Hoover, you're no Federico Garcia Lorca."

Okay, I'm writing from a place of almost unsullied ignorance with respect to experimental poetry, the New York School poets, and postmodern poetry. I had no idea who Paul Hoover was when I read this book, a gift from my aunt. The poems reminded me of John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, neither of whom does much for me either. Sure enough, the online trail of Paul Hoover soon led to these two and a bunch of other poets I either don't care for much or know nothing about.

That said, there are a lot of lovely lines. It might actually be terrific poetry. It's just not to my taste. Some of the forms pleased me in their similarity to those used by Lorca, whom I love. I think if you like music composed with dice or by casting yarrow wands for the I Ching, and you're a lot more highly educated than I am, you might really enjoy this book.