Description

After-Music is a varied and rich collection of meditations on both the personal and universal. Among the many intriguing places, people, and events that Hilberry brings to life in these poems are watching manatees in a Florida canal, a reluctant priest blessing the animals in Mexico, a rushed and sullen checkout girl in the supermarket, and Day of the Dead skeletons that form a mariachi band. Some poems are formal—in sonnets, quatrains, and tetrameter couples—but most are free verse, all of them accessible and enjoyable reading.

This collection is divided into five sections, organized by theme. The first and last sections are the most personal and contemplative, from the soul at season’s end in “Open” to the moon about to speak in “Silence.” In revealing and inviting confessions, the second section lets readers listen in on the thoughts of objects, including an oboe, a cherry pie, a moustache, a mousetrap, and a waning moon. The third section looks at horseshoe crabs, dust mites, memories stored in the hippocampus, creatures steering by pheromones through the sexual dark. The fourth section offers twelve Christmas poems, containing varied voices and a fresh look at that occasion—something few poems have attempted since Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi.”

Hilberry’s poetry bridges the gap between the ethereal realm of the spirit and the stark realism of the material world. Poetry lovers and teachers and students of contemporary verse will enjoy this significant volume.

Published by Wayne State University Press

Author(s)

Conrad Hilberry is emeritus professor of English at Kalamazoo College and author of several books of poetry, including The Fingernail of Luck, Player Piano, and Sorting the Smoke, and co-editor of Contemporary Michigan Poetry: Poems from the Third Coast (Wayne State University Press, 1988).

Other Books by Conrad Hilberry: Luke Karamazov, New Poems from the Third Coast: Contemporary Michigan Poetry, Contemporary Michigan Poetry: Poems from the Third Coast,

Reviews

“There is no danger in overestimating the power and heart of After-Music, or in overstating it: This marvelous collection is pure magic, a hymn of grace. What I felt in the immediate aftermath of reading these quietly intense and stunningly beautiful poems was that rare kind of gratitude that made me want to burst into song. His is a deeply compassionate sensibility, and I know of no voice in American letters that has struck so perfect a note for love as Conrad Hilberry. This book is an achievement of the first order!”

— Jack Driscoll, author of How Like an Angel

“This excellent book shows Hilberry again combining an intelligent presentation of subject matter with a challenging use of poetic form.”

— Peter Stitt, editor of the Gettysburg Review

"These poems are intimate and humble, steeped in a variety of forms and rhythms, traveling from childhood to the final contemplation of death. Hilberry makes writing look effortless."

— Marcia Aldrich, associate professor of English at Michigan State University

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