Poetry. H. L. Hix's newest poetry book, CHROMATIC, bears as its epigraph the philosopher Spinoza's assertion that "Desire is the very nature or essence of every single individual." The three sequences of poems in Chromatic test that claim. Each borrows its title: "Remarks on Color" from Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Eighteen Maniacs" from Duke Ellington, and "The Well-Tempered Clavier" from J. S. Bach. Exploiting those predecessors, the poems in CHROMATIC explore the full range of effects caused by human desire, from ecstasy to suffering.

Author Hometown: LARAMIE, WY USA



About the author: Harvey Lee Hix (born 1960), who signs his work H.L. Hix, is an American poet and academic. Hix is the author of books of poetry, criticism and essays and has been awarded a fellowship from the NEA. He has also won the KCAI Teaching Excellence Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry (from Truman State University Press in Missouri, no relation to the more famous prize in Britain). In 2006 he was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. He is a professor and the director of the creative writing MFA program at the University of Wyoming.