Bob Hicok

The punchlines of poems evolve into seriousness, and thoughtful meditation is transformed into comedy in this fourth collection of poems that demonstrates the writer's fluid talent to shift mood and use language for effect. Original.

Winner of the 2008 Bobbit National Poetry Prize. Few others in contemporary poetry are so brilliantly able to combine wit and weight, to charge the language so it virtually glows in the dark. Hicok's poems just plain rock. They rock because they are gorgeous. They rock because they are sad and turn on the radio. They …

Bob Hicok is associate professor of English at Virginia Tech University. He is the author of This Clumsy Living, Insomnia Diary, Animal Soul (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, ) Plus Shipping, and The Legend of Light. Hicok is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA Fellowships, the …

"The most potent ingredient in virtually every one of Bob Hicok's compact, well-turned poems is a laughter as old as humanity itself."—The New York Times Book Review"Hicok's poems are like boomerangs; they jut out in wild, associative directions, yet find their way back to the root of the matter, often in sincere and …

Whether Hicok is considering the reflection of human faces in the Vietnam War Memorial or the elements of a “Modern Prototype” factory, he prompts an icy realization that we may have never seen the world as it truly is. But his resilient voice and consistent perspective is neither blaming nor didactic, and ultimately …

Chosen alongside celebrated poets Louise Glück and Czeslaw Milosz, Bob Hicok’s Animal Soul was the standout surprise of the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award nominations. According to author David Wojahn, a three-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, this collection of poetry is the best collection yet by a poet …

"...seamlessly, miraculously, [Hicok's] eye imbues even the dreadful with beauty and meaning."--The New York Times Book Review