Poetry. Winner of the Gerald Cable Book Award. "James Hoch's poems contain an eerie and clarifying power that reminds that reminds me of Chardin's still lifes. Lake Chardin, Hoch celebrates the beauty and fragility of life by fixing on the luminous details of mortality. He does so through a dense but elegant syntx. Unlike most first books, experience drives Hoch's poems. A PARADE OF HANDS is so sure of itslef that raders will think of James Hoch's achievement and accomplishment rather than of his promise and potential."—Michael Collier