H. L. Hix has published an anthology, Wild and Whirling Words: A Poetic Conversation (2004), and 11 books of poetry and literary criticism with Etruscan, including Shadows of Houses (2005); Chromatic (2006); God Bless: A Political/Poetic Discourse (2007); Legible Heavens (2008); Incident Light (2009); First Fire, Then Birds (2010); As Easy As Lying: Essays on Poetry (2002); Lines of Inquiry (2011); As Much As, If Not More Than (2014); I'm Here to Learn to Dream in Your Language (2015); and American Anger: An Evidentiary (2016). In addition to having been a finalist for the National Book Award for Chromatic, his awards include the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Peregrine Smith Award, and fellowships from the NEA, the Kansas Arts Commission, and the Missouri Arts Council. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin, taught at Kansas City Art Institute, and was an administrator at The Cleveland Institute of Art, before accepting his current position as professor in the Philosophy Department and the Creative Writing Program at a university in "one of those square states.” He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin and at Shanghai University, and a Fulbright Distinguished Professor at Yonsei University.
Table of Contents
Leading Questions
What might it mean to think ... my own experience?
(or somebody?)
And, if so, for whom?
How do you have sex in hell?
Did she consider me dead?
What did I think we were doing?
Is there a way to wake up?
And after that?
Will my word grow ... every day with silence?
Where does it come from and what does it consist of?
yellow-throated?
How do we move ... to responsible action?
Can one be vulnerable to oneself?
But what is it that repetition repeats?
So how can ordinary people ... state?
The feathers?
Is this the time when we compare notes?
Where do you draw the line between languages?
(still?)
What does it do to one's ipseity to say ... I am dying?
By the scent of lavender emanating from them?
What is given as reality here?
What makes it possible for the category to act in this way?
What function does pain perform, does testimony?
How many of them are there? ... What do they want?
Some mystical experience you've gone through, or what?
What happens to all those tears?
Why would I see she? What you mean?
What is that light like?
What would it mean ... to end metaphysics?
Logoi Sophon
Fire at Night
Near Fire
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They protest, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
Hearer, hear what Sayer says:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
Hearer, hear what Sayer says:
They beg, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
Hearer, hear what Sayer says:
They declare, as Anyone might:
They urge, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
Hearer, hear what Sayer says:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They declare, as Anyone might:
They insist, as Anyone might:
They fret, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
Hearer, hear what Sayer says:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They request, as Anyone might:
They pledge, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
They ask, as Anyone might:
And the Voice of Materials
In Place of a Name ...
Eight Lo-Fis
Of All Evanescences the Wispmost
Toward an Architecture of Unstable Structure
Unfoldings
Lustrations
Echoes
Refractions
