Reveilles

'The sense of the body flowing from an old comfortable posture / to a new exciting yet strange position' is the animating force in Nathan Hoks' dazzling first collection of poems. His fine gradations of observation ('exciting yet strange') turn the reader into a barometer of strong subtleties like those of the weather, that can be minute even as they affect us powerfully. These poems are like great gulps of fresh air. -- John Ashbery With courtly delicacy and humility belied by subtly extreme declarations and refreshingly diverse means, Nathan Hoks' poems can be one moment deceptively plain-spoken, the next broadcasting from a typhoon. Reveilles may wake us 'into some small nebula,' but it would make of our minds and hearts comets and red giants. -- Dean Young

Re-imagining a tempered surrealism for the twenty-first century, Nathan Hoks’ Reveilles moves from the landscape of dreams into a beautiful reality. Fusing deadpan humor with subtle emotional registers, Hoks’ “laughing angel” reminds us: “The sky holds nothing to the ground.”

Reveilles, Nathan Hoks’ first collection of poems, re-imagines a tempered surrealism for the twenty-first century. Hoks combines dream-like sequences with flashes of reality—in fact, rather than escaping the world for the rich pleasures of dreams, Hoks’ poems often move from the landscape of dreams into a beautiful reality. Lovely and love-struck, these fiercely witty and wildly imaginative poems—including meditations on icicles and a “listless oboist” with “no note for green”—manage to transform into love poems before our eyes. Formally various and rhetorically questioning, Hoks’ restless, death-tinged poems keep asking, “Why do I suddenly feel so sentient?”. Hoks’ speakers “like to walk / behind these prop-like thoughts” only to recognize they will soon become “the up-and-coming moss.” Fusing deadpan humor with subtle emotional registers, the “laughing angel” in this book reminds us: “The sky holds nothing to the ground.”