The order of things

Then I stopped hearing from you.

^{Grief (Desconsuelo) by Eduardo Kingman}

Dear Readers,

When I first falling in love with Bob’s poetry and the way he uses language as a playdough in his hands, I decided to find a collection. And when I did, I read it over and over because that’s the only Bob Hicok collection I had and all I wanted to read was Bob Hicok — his voice had taken me a prisoner.

This poem is memorable to me for multiple reasons, but especially because of one particular image that has stayed with me since: “I was going to quote two lines from the poem, but I’m not doing that because I’d rather you encounter it first in the context of the poem.”

Truly, the large associative leaps (a phrase Bob warns against) are so impressive throughout this poem — surprisingly delightful, strange yet logical.

Whenever I build a course on list-poems, this will be the first poem I include. I love that this list is not stagnant, as litany often can be, and is instead full of movement. The tricky thing with list poems is finding a good ending is incredibly difficult. I love that this one finds a perfect place to land too.

I’ve been too absorbed mapping the craft of this poem here, but at the heart of it is a lot of emotion that gets me every time. You will feel it too.

May we learn to live with our grief,

Karan

The order of things

by Bob Hicok

Then I stopped hearing from you. Then I thought
I was Beethoven’s cochlear implant. Then I listened
to deafness. Then I tacked a whisper
to the bulletin board. Then I liked dandelions
best in their Afro stage. Then a breeze
held their soft beauty for ransom. Then no one
throws a Molotov cocktail better
than a Buddhist monk. Then the abstractions
built a tree fort. Then I stopped hearing from you.
Then I stared at my life with the back of my head.
Then an earthquake somewhere every day.
Then I felt as foolish as a flip-flop
alone on a beach. Then as a beach
alone with a sea. Then as a sea
repeating itself to the moon. Then I stopped hearing
from the moon. Then I waved. Then I threw myself
into the work of throwing myself
as far as I can. Then I picked myself up
and wondered how many of us
get around this way. Then I carried
the infinity. Then I buried the phone.
Then the ground rang. Then I answered the ground.
Then the dial tone of dirt. Then I sat on a boulder
not hearing from you. Then I did jumping jacks
not hearing from you. Then I felt up silence. Then silence
and I went all the way.

This if from Bob Hicok’s Elegy Owed (Copper Canyon Press 2013), which was the first collection I read of Bob’s and is still my most favorite collection of all time. Buy Bob Hicok’s Elegy Owed!