The editor of the anthology POSTMODERN AMERICAN POETRY (Norton, 1994) and the author of six earlier books of poetry, Hoover is credited with helping expand the possiblities for the ironic perspective in American verse. Seeming to find little or no contradiciton between pop irony and lyrical intensity, and often shifting between the two with a remarkable freedom, Hoover writes poems that, according to Ron Padgett, glow with the pleasures of surprise. The selected poems are an ideal starting-place for readers new to Hoover, while the spare and resonant new poems offer his fans yet another slant in a fascinating trajectory.

Author City: MILL VALLEY, CA USA

Paul Hoover is the author of eleven books of poetry. He is the editor of the anthology Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994) and, with Maxine Chernoff, the annual literary magazine NEW AMERICAN WRITING. His collection of literary essays, Fables of Representation, was published in the Poets on Poetry series of University of Michigan Press in 2004. He teaches at San Francisco State University.