Poetry. At once rhythmically charged and stilled by the silences, Paul Hoover's POEMS IN SPANISH takes the English language into fraternity with the haunting lyricism of Spanish, and in this way pays tribute to the great poets writing in the Ibero Hispanic tradition of the 20th century--among them Pessoa, Lorca, Vallejo, Andrade, Neruda, Sabines. POEMS IN SPANISH is a collection written in English, but it is an English that surprises with its sharply etched and yet resonant cadences. Hoover's achievement reminds us that we often must hear our own voice translated through other mediums before we can receive it most accurately, and before we can recognize most truthfully its sounding of our own deepest sensibilities. These poems demonstrate how a reader can find in poetry a source of pleasure-for the ear, the heart, and imagination.

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.