Reviews
"This London is an enjoyable book of poetry in its own right, as much for its ambitious engagements with millennia of London history as for the inviting openness of its speakers [...] I would most highly recommend it for those about to visit London, or those recently returned. It will be a far more engaging volume than your average guide book."
The strength of this collection, the bones around which these poems amass, is a sense of humanity: a reminder that we are all connected in this world despite the different origins of our ancestors and the opposite directions in which they may have traveled.
This London brings us the living and the dead, the lutefisk and the vindaloo, Joseph Merrick and the veterans of the Somme. It gives us the Middle Kingdom and South Dakota and the Imperial War Museum. Roman centurions and Halal delicatessens. The Luftwaffe and Saint Paul's Cathedral. This London is a generous, nuanced collection which invites the reader to reconsider the known and the familiar, to walk the streets of a great city and to contemplate what it means to be alive-not beyond the dead, but among them.
A book of poems about London by any non-Londoner has to be a interest. But a book of poems about London by a 'foreigner' has to be of especial interest [...] with his clear-eyed perception and the ability to focus on the apposite and illuminating details [Hicks] has something of Chaucer's and Defoe's gift in his writing
Patrick Hicks writes poems of personal history, social history, world history. It is, I think, his way of redrawing the map of our human hearts.
These finely wrought lyrics are focused on the family-in Ireland, Canada, the United States, and in-transit-to reveal origins, maps, anxieties, and coincidences. Hicks recovers from time desires, loves, and the moist mother tongues of the dispersed. Hicks searches through literary history for those he seeks to follow-W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Brian Moore in particular. Traveling Through History is a singularly impressive first collection-allusive, engaging, exciting.
The poems of Patrick Hicks brim with the confluence of Irish, American, and personal history.
These poems come out of real, actual, lived experiences, a rare thing these days. Hicks seems to have absorbed the work of some of the best poets in that same vein in the past half century: Theodore Roethke, Robinson Jeffers, James Dickey, Seamus Heaney, to name a few. What I find remarkable about Hicks' poems in this collection is that they can simultaneously accommodate not only personal but national, international, and even evolutionary phenomena. […] Hicks is the kind of poet I go for: straight-forward, clear, tough-minded, knowledgeable, accessible, memorable. He has experienced much in his young life; he has taken the time to inform himself on the facts of history and science; and he writes with insight, power, and passion.
Patrick Hicks takes us to many places, among them Barcelona, Berlin, and Belfast, as he reflects upon the mystery of existence, of what it means to be alive where the "poisonous ghosts of history" challenge and haunt us. I admire the variety of subjects that the poems reflect-regret and wonder, concern and disdain, compassion and hope. The voice in these poems is honest and recognizable. It wants what most of us want-to find meaningful identification with the past no less than the present. Carrying history on his back like a knapsack, and aware of the vagaries of chance, Hicks looks to what, for him, finally matters: one person loving another.
Like the delicate draglines connecting spiderlings to their nest, Patrick Hicks connects us all to his thoughts. We have no control over the directions he leads us, but his words-these fragile draglines-make sense of past and present chaos. Tenderly, inexorably, he reveals the world through his eyes and words […] I like the delicate touch evident in Hicks' poems. Regardless of topic, Hicks demonstrates the innate compassion present in the human spirit. Draglines addresses human concerns and sorrows, but leaves the reader oddly comforted in the process.
Patrick Hicks' poems are largely about the "Janus face of history," as he calls it. We are continually reminded that time can travel both backwards and forwards along the routes of memory and anticipation. Hicks' steady, imaginative gaze brings the past, both personal and historical, to life, transformed from frozen fact to something warm, human, and moving. We range from Belfast to Berlin, from earliest history to the present moment in which a father draws for his son maps which are, like time itself, "fluid and restless." In vivid, lucent imagery and flawlessly elegant sentences, Hicks reminds us that even the most personal act - a kiss, for instance - takes place on the larger field of history.
There is no doubt Hicks is a poet. His poetry reflects hard work and keen insights, as well as a life-altering yearning to bare the soul […] these poems-based on visits to places like Belfast, Berlin, Barcelona, and the Lake Superior shores-are creative in a profound-yet-discernible style. They evoke primary emotions on the first read but beg a deeper examination of the gently layered levels of expression beneath. In his page-by-page journey, Hicks visits war and love, loss and epiphany, exotic locations and familiar emotions. The opportunity to ride along is a gift worth reading.
One of the most frequently repeated phrases in Patrick Hicks' Draglines is "I imagine." Hicks' resists "the gravity/ of poetic journalism" and instead opts to "dream spirits into words". His subjects range widely: Bombs over World War II Germany, the plane dropping the Little Boy bomb, the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, a sound engineer at EMI the day the Beatles recorded the first album, the world of the Lakota before the advent of the White Man, and a number of others. Hicks' poems offer meditative intensity, amplified with startlingly similes, assonance, and alliteration. These poems are vital seeds, ready to sprout and spring up in readers' imaginations.
More coming soon…
The strength of this collection, the bones around which these poems amass, is a sense of humanity: a reminder that we are all connected in this world despite the different origins of our ancestors and the opposite directions in which they may have traveled.
This London brings us the living and the dead, the lutefisk and the vindaloo, Joseph Merrick and the veterans of the Somme. It gives us the Middle Kingdom and South Dakota and the Imperial War Museum. Roman centurions and Halal delicatessens. The Luftwaffe and Saint Paul's Cathedral. This London is a generous, nuanced collection which invites the reader to reconsider the known and the familiar, to walk the streets of a great city and to contemplate what it means to be alive-not beyond the dead, but among them.
--Brian Turner, author of
Here, Bullet and
Phantom Noise
A book of poems about London by any non-Londoner has to be a interest. But a book of poems about London by a 'foreigner' has to be of especial interest [...] with his clear-eyed perception and the ability to focus on the apposite and illuminating details [Hicks] has something of Chaucer's and Defoe's gift in his writing
--William Oxley, Acumen (read the
entire review HERE)
Patrick Hicks writes poems of personal history, social history, world history. It is, I think, his way of redrawing the map of our human hearts.
--Richard Jones, editor of
Poetry East, author
of Country of Air, A Perfect Time,
and The Blessing
These finely wrought lyrics are focused on the family-in Ireland, Canada, the United States, and in-transit-to reveal origins, maps, anxieties, and coincidences. Hicks recovers from time desires, loves, and the moist mother tongues of the dispersed. Hicks searches through literary history for those he seeks to follow-W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Brian Moore in particular. Traveling Through History is a singularly impressive first collection-allusive, engaging, exciting.
--Eamonn Wall, author of
The Crosses, Refuge at DeSoto Bend,
and
From the Sin-é Café to the Black Hills
From the Sin-é Café to the Black Hills
The poems of Patrick Hicks brim with the confluence of Irish, American, and personal history.
--Daniel Tobin, author of
Second Things, The Narrows,
and Passage to the Center
and Passage to the Center
These poems come out of real, actual, lived experiences, a rare thing these days. Hicks seems to have absorbed the work of some of the best poets in that same vein in the past half century: Theodore Roethke, Robinson Jeffers, James Dickey, Seamus Heaney, to name a few. What I find remarkable about Hicks' poems in this collection is that they can simultaneously accommodate not only personal but national, international, and even evolutionary phenomena. […] Hicks is the kind of poet I go for: straight-forward, clear, tough-minded, knowledgeable, accessible, memorable. He has experienced much in his young life; he has taken the time to inform himself on the facts of history and science; and he writes with insight, power, and passion.
--David Allan Evans, poet laureate of
South Dakota
Patrick Hicks takes us to many places, among them Barcelona, Berlin, and Belfast, as he reflects upon the mystery of existence, of what it means to be alive where the "poisonous ghosts of history" challenge and haunt us. I admire the variety of subjects that the poems reflect-regret and wonder, concern and disdain, compassion and hope. The voice in these poems is honest and recognizable. It wants what most of us want-to find meaningful identification with the past no less than the present. Carrying history on his back like a knapsack, and aware of the vagaries of chance, Hicks looks to what, for him, finally matters: one person loving another.
--William Kloefkorn, poet laureate of
Nebraska
Like the delicate draglines connecting spiderlings to their nest, Patrick Hicks connects us all to his thoughts. We have no control over the directions he leads us, but his words-these fragile draglines-make sense of past and present chaos. Tenderly, inexorably, he reveals the world through his eyes and words […] I like the delicate touch evident in Hicks' poems. Regardless of topic, Hicks demonstrates the innate compassion present in the human spirit. Draglines addresses human concerns and sorrows, but leaves the reader oddly comforted in the process.
--Midwest Book Review
Patrick Hicks' poems are largely about the "Janus face of history," as he calls it. We are continually reminded that time can travel both backwards and forwards along the routes of memory and anticipation. Hicks' steady, imaginative gaze brings the past, both personal and historical, to life, transformed from frozen fact to something warm, human, and moving. We range from Belfast to Berlin, from earliest history to the present moment in which a father draws for his son maps which are, like time itself, "fluid and restless." In vivid, lucent imagery and flawlessly elegant sentences, Hicks reminds us that even the most personal act - a kiss, for instance - takes place on the larger field of history.
--Jeanne Emmons, author of
Rootbound and
The Glove of the World
There is no doubt Hicks is a poet. His poetry reflects hard work and keen insights, as well as a life-altering yearning to bare the soul […] these poems-based on visits to places like Belfast, Berlin, Barcelona, and the Lake Superior shores-are creative in a profound-yet-discernible style. They evoke primary emotions on the first read but beg a deeper examination of the gently layered levels of expression beneath. In his page-by-page journey, Hicks visits war and love, loss and epiphany, exotic locations and familiar emotions. The opportunity to ride along is a gift worth reading.
--Rapid City Journal
One of the most frequently repeated phrases in Patrick Hicks' Draglines is "I imagine." Hicks' resists "the gravity/ of poetic journalism" and instead opts to "dream spirits into words". His subjects range widely: Bombs over World War II Germany, the plane dropping the Little Boy bomb, the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, a sound engineer at EMI the day the Beatles recorded the first album, the world of the Lakota before the advent of the White Man, and a number of others. Hicks' poems offer meditative intensity, amplified with startlingly similes, assonance, and alliteration. These poems are vital seeds, ready to sprout and spring up in readers' imaginations.
--Clif Mason, author of
From the Dead Before
More coming soon…