The Daily Glance: Hitchcock

George Hitchcock's six-minute poems is my introduction to his works even though it is a collection of some of his last poems.  The collection is a chapbook sown with good paper.  With so many presses moving to POD (and I'm not knocking it), it is nice to see such a nicely-crafted book.  Beyond the book as object, the poems themselves are mostly short and contemplative, though they seem to provide few answers.  Several feel like memories thrown before us with little context.

Your soft voice
A conch shell
Echoing the swollen tide
Your swift syllables
Falling like lost leaves
On the vestibule
             Of love
Dormant desire
Speaking in lust's
Eternal dialect
Now half-forgotten.

Perhaps I have been reading too many haiku myself lately, but this poem has a theme and style that reminds me a little of early Chinese and Japanese poetry, so I wouldn't be surprised to see that he had read some.

From reading this short collection, I'm interested in reading more of his work.

Hitchcock, George.  six-minute poems.  Tavern Books: Portland, 2011.  


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