Description

This collection of ninety-five new and selected poems is a distillation of Daniel Hughes' best work from the past thirty years. His poems, which take a lyric and ironic view of life, are a kind of transformation, even a transcendence, for the reader as well as for him.
Hughes captures the huge variation and complexity of reality without fudging, without smoothing over the ambiguities and contradictions that are so constantly cropping up in our lives, and he does so with wit, elegance, and at times, a remarkable simplicity. He also demonstrates great empathic power in his poetry, projecting himself convincingly into an historical character or making us imagine what it would be like to be embodied in a tree.
Hughes is a consummate craftsman and uses all the various devices of poetry—image, tone, diction, and persona—to splendid effect.

Published by Wayne State University Press

Author(s)

Other Books by Daniel Hughes: Ashes & Stars,

Reviews

"Daniel Hughes' poems are filled with crafty ironies and witty refusals, with exact and exacting observations about the disappointments of life in a fallen time, yet they also present us with a singer who has slipped through the side door onto the main stage and sounded the flaming, reckless, operatic notes of a high splendor."

— Edward Hirsch