In this Book
- Put Your Hands In: Poems
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: Louisiana State University Press
- Series: Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets
"Exactly a century ago, the Armory Show brought European avant-garde art to New York. We are still experiencing its consequences. Among the works on view was Marcel Duchamp's notorious Nude Descending a Staircase, which a derisive critic wanted to rename 'Explosion in a Shingle Factory.' Both titles come to mind as one reads Chris Hosea's Put Your Hands In, which somehow subsumes derision and erotic energy and comes out on top. Maybe that's because 'poetry is the cruelest month,' as he says, correcting T. S. Eliot. Transfixed in midparoxysm, the poems also remind us of Samuel Beckett's line (in Watt): 'The pain not yet pleasure, the pleasure not yet pain.' One feels plunged in a wave of happening that is about to crest." -- John Ashbery, from his judge's citation for the Walt Whitman Award
Table of Contents
- Title Page, Copyright Page
- pp. i-viii
- Of Me to Love
- p. 3
- I Too Am Gay
- p. 5
- Occupy Street
- p. 8
- One of these Girls
- pp. 9-10
- Grandmother Snuff
- p. 12
- Wife Wellbutrin
- p. 14
- Father Work
- p. 15
- Mistress Damage
- p. 16
- Choirboy Skittles
- p. 17
- Cousin Pot
- p. 18
- Sister Chablis
- p. 20
- Mother Old Fashioned
- p. 21
- Brother Oxycontin
- p. 22
- New Oil Today’s Men
- p. 23
- Stop Me Before
- p. 24
- Porcupine Fever Is Gonna Get You
- pp. 26-27
- Lotto Blues
- p. 30
- Welcome Music
- p. 32
- If There Be a Season
- p. 33
- Big Red Booster
- p. 34
- All You Can
- p. 35
- Forever Backpacker
- p. 36
- The Great-Uncle Dead
- pp. 37-39
- No Key to This One, No Tune
- pp. 40-41
- Auto-Brightness
- pp. 44-45
- Buffalo Nickel, Toothbrush, Crude
- pp. 46-47
- Hopscotch Smudges
- p. 49
- Game Show Theme Mix
- p. 50
- Words by Karl Marx, Tuxedo by Riot
- pp. 51-52
- The Barn Party
- pp. 53-54
- Gonna Dig Up Ozu
- pp. 55-56
- Hard Drive Scrub
- pp. 58-59
- Across the Boss’s Desk
- pp. 60-71
- Purple Snow Purple Snow
- pp. 72-75
- Black Steel
- p. 76
- Songs for a Country Drive
- pp. 77-82