Tony Hoagland Visits as Tenth Westminster Poet

Acclaimed poet Tony Hoagland visited Westminster School April 20-21 as the 10th Westminster Poet. Hoagland is known for writing poems that zip along with wit, humor and irony until all of a sudden they either explode or implode and the reader is left breathless in the face of some profound human truth.

He began his reading in the Werner Centennial Center talking about his own troubles as an adolescent and then reading some of the poems he has written about youth. He later read poems about family, race, love, rap music, and control and power.

“I want people to know poetry is about real life,” he explained. “Poetry is a way of using language to get a hold of things.”

He also discussed the process of writing poetry. “When you write, you want to get lucky. You put something together that hasn’t been put together before. Making something is a satisfaction most people don’t get anymore.”

Tony spent time with English classes the following morning, where he read more poems and answered questions about poetry. The students had studied his poetry throughout the year.

“Poetry is dedicated to realism or the imagination,” he pointed out. “Some poetry brings you closer to the real world, while other poetry takes you away from it for relief.”

He also told students that his poem “America” was the best poem he ever wrote and emphasized that poetry is always trying to break through to a person’s imagination. “I don’t want people to think poetry is harmless literature,” he said. “I want it to penetrate your life. Think about how a poem tries to reach you.”

In some classes, he had students write couplets, encouraging them to use a lot of detail. “It is always going to be in the strength of the detail that the imagination stretches itself,” he explained.

In Sixth Form English, he talked about how a poem tries to stop a moment. “That is why people like poems,” he emphasized. “They like to slow down. When you are in a good poem, you are fully in that moment. I like that as a writer. Attention is a hard thing to get.”

Hoagland has published three award-winning volumes of poetry, a book of essays (Real Sofistikashun), a chapbook of poems (Hard Rain) and his latest book, Unincorporated Persons of the Late Honda Dynasty. His first book of poems, Sweet Ruin (1992), won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. His second collection, Donkey Gospel (1998), won the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, while his third book, What Narcissism Means to Me (2003), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In addition to his published books, Hoagland is a frequent contributor to journals and magazines. He received The Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award in 2005 for his contribution to humor in American poetry and the Folger Shakespeare Library’s O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize, which is presented for outstanding teaching, as well as for excellent writing.

Hoagland earned a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Iowa and an M.F.A. at the University of Arizona. He has taught at a number of colleges and currently teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Houston. His Westminster visit was made possible through support from the Ford-Goldfarb Fund, which was established in 2005 by former trustee Maureen Ford-Goldfarb and her daughter Kirsten Ford ’00 to support English Department enrichment activities.