Grace - Paperback

by John Hodgen (Author)

Winner of the 2005 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Grace is John Hodgen's third book of poetry. He is a poet of extreme contrasts, offering us the dregs of despair, yet instantly recalling hope in the beauty of nature or in a moment in time when all is right, when we realize grace. In "For the Leapers" the narrator relates, "We will fall past the angels, / we will fall from such height, / our tears will lift up from our eyes. / We will fall straight through hell. / And then we will rise." Hodgen's poems roam through history, religion, man-made disasters, baseball, pop culture, and Wal-Marts, on paths that come full circle with remarkable completeness, maturity, and dexterity.

Author Biography

John Hodgen is visiting assistant professor of English at Assumption College. He is the author of two previous books of poetry: In My Father's House, winner of the Bluestem Award, and Bread Without Sorrow, winner of the Balcones Poetry Prize. Hodgen is the recipient of numerous other awards, including the Foley Poetry Prize, the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, the Grolier Prize, an Arvon Foundation Award, and the 2000 Massachusetts Cultural Commission Artist Foundation Grant in Poetry.