H. L. Hix

Perfect Hell

An Autopsy (Arts and Their Philosophies)

Morte D'Author

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.

Ley Lines

Jüri Talvet

In a provocative and thoughtful essay, Estonia's preeminent poet and cultural critic investigates the role of culture in the postmodern world. Weighing in against grandstanding by western governments and envisioning instead a dialogue between the traditionally powerful western nations and the rest of the world, the author pays particular attention to how Estonia would figure in such a discussion.

Meditations from U

A Call for Cultural Symbiosis

They are separated by an ocean and by a century and a half, but in other ways Ivan Ilyich and H. L. Hix are not so far apart. Ivan Ilyich's former colleagues in the law courts of St. Petersburg go through the motions of mourning his death, keeping to themselves their relief that it was he, not themselves, who had died. So do H. L. Hix's former colleagues in the English Department of the University of Wyoming. Ivan Ilyich is hanging curtains when he bumps his kidney, sustaining the injury that eventually kills him. H. L. Hix is mowing the dandelions that have overgrown his gravel driveway when a kicked-up rock inflicts the injury to his kidney that eventually kills him. Ivan Ilyich wishes he had more chances to play bridge, and H. L. Hix wishes there were an Indian restaurant in his backward town. Ivan Ilyich's weakening body contrasts with the sturdy frame of his servant Gerasim, and H. L. Hix's decaying body pales before the vigorous body of his home health-care aide Gary Simm. But just as one hears within walls the humming of hived honeybees, so within the incidental similarities that associate Ivan Ilyich and H. L. Hix, the reader hears in The Death of H. L. Hix the humming of the ultimate and universal fate that unites writer, reader, and written-of into the one protagonist of the one story.

The Death of H. L. Hix

Some of the included poems were published previously.

Chromatic

How do poets really think about each other's work? In search of an answer, H.L. Hix invited thirty-three of America's finest and most influential poets, representing diverse backgrounds and approaches, to engage in a conversation. Each volunteered an original poem, which Hix circulated anonymously among six of the other poets. The poems and responses progressed from poet to poet--unfolding, complicating, and sending up sparks of insight, of opinion, of disagreement.--Etruscan Press.

A Poetic Conversation

Wild and Whirling Words

William Heyen

Dante Di Stefano

In the third Tribus by Etruscan Press, we present 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-realized future, in which Di Stefano's daughter faces an array of 21st century challenges. Upon receiving this submission, we came to think about the concerns that have shaped the poetry of Heyen and Hix, our two flagship poets, and we decided that a Tribus, joining work which has defined Etruscan over the past twenty years, would be the best way to advance the dialogue. 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. His driving, eclectic force is unmatched in contemporary poetry. 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, and God Bless, adapted from the speeches of George W. Bush and the tirades of Osama Bin Laden. Yet, his work 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. So, three generations look backward, forward, and inward. But chronology is not the most salient feature of this book of generations. Presented here are three books which thread through our sense of identity, being both deeply personal and also somehow liberated from the narrative of biography. Spare, profuse, elusive--these poems reveal how we are versions of one another while also that there never will be another. They present originality through which the prime echoes anew. The sensibility behind Generations is perhaps best expressed in a recent letter from H. L. Hix. "To live by poetry. Which of course I want to read in more than one sense; live robustly and fully by means of poetry; order one's life according to values derived from poetry; live in proximity to poetry."

Generations: Lullaby with Incendiary Device, the Nazi Patrol, and How It Is That We

John King

Zachary Lazar

Adam Peterson

David Macey

Chris Tarry

Michael Thurston

Andrew McKay

Shane McCrae

Meghan O'Rourke

Alex Stein

Jeffrey Yang

Sesshu Foster

Robert Polito

Tamas Dobozy

James Richardson

Cole Swensen

Tom Sleigh

Judith Skillman

Josh Billings

Jeffery Allen

Sarah Barber

Dan Beachy-Quick

Priscilla Becker

Callista Buchen

Drew Calvert

James Capozzi

Kelly Cherry

Ruth Curry

Weston Cutter

Steve Davenport

Laura Engel

Avital Gad-Cykman

Kathleen Graber

Myronn Hardy

Henry Israeli

Jeanne-Marie Jackson

Yahia Lababidi

Laurie Lamon

Kevin Lutz

John Marvin

Diane Mehta

Kathryn Nuernberger

Fani Papageorgiou

Elahzar Rao

F. Daniel Rzicznek

Craig Teicher

Jacob White

Wyatt Williams

Paul-Victor Winters

Marion Wyce

The Rat's Nest

This book explores the consequences of postmodern theory and answers the question, "What did postmodern theory begin?"

Legacies of Postmodern Theory

Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes

While agreeing with critics who label Gass's novels and stories metafiction, he contends that to stop the exploration there would be to miss a complete appreciation of the novelist. Hix demonstrates instead how Gass's writings both break and follow tradition - as metafiction belonging to the company of works by John Barth but also as moral fiction belonging to the long American tradition that includes The Scarlet Letter and To Kill a Mockingbird."--BOOK JACKET.

Understanding William H. Gass

H. L. Hix

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