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Book Title

Application for Release from the Dream

Subtitle
Poems
Author 1
Tony Hoagland
Poem Excerpt
The parade for the slain police officer
goes past the bakery
 
and the smell of fresh bread
makes the mourners salivate against their will.
                                                                                   
—from “Note to Reality”
Body
Are we corrupt or innocent, fragmented or whole? Are responsibility and freedom irreconcilable? Do we value memory or succumb to our forgetfulness? Application for Release from the Dream, Tony Hoagland’s fifth collection of poems, pursues these questions with the hobnailed abandon of one who needs to know how a citizen of twenty-first-century America can stay human. With whiplash nerve and tender curiosity, Hoagland both surveys the damage and finds the wonder that makes living worthwhile. Mirthful, fearless, and precise, these poems are full of judgment and mercy.

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List Price
$16.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-718-4
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
96
Trim Size
Trim Size
6 x 9
Keynote
The eagerly awaited, brilliant, and engaging new poems by Tony Hoagland, author of What Narcissism Means to Me

About the Author

Tony  Hoagland
Credit: Elizabeth Jacobson
Tony Hoagland was the author of seven collections of poetry, including Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, What Narcissism Means to Me, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. He was also the author of two collections of essays, Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays and Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft. He received the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, the Mark Twain Award from the Poetry Foundation, and the O. B. Hardison, Jr. Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He taught for many years at the University of Houston. Hoagland died in October 2018.
 
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Praise

  • Named a Best Poetry Collection of 2015 by The Washington Post and BuzzFeed

     
  • “John Updike once said that ‘[e]xcellence in the great things is built upon excellence in the small.’ Tony Hoagland’s latest collection, Application for Release from the Dream, is a first-rate case in point.”The Rumpus
  • “Hoagland is diligent, inquisitive, compelling, and barn-burning in these revelatory and necessary poems.”Booklist
  • “Full of poems like a rush of fresh air. . . . Enjoy Hoagland’s well-crafted evocative thoughts and humor.”Shelf Awareness for Readers, starred review
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