Spotlight on Achievement
Bob Hicok
Bob Hicok is a winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship (2008), National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (2008), Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry (2008), and the Pushcart Prize (2006, 2008, 2009)--and more.
Call the Paparazzi
by Ed Weathers
Bob Hicok is becoming famous, but he doesn’t want people talking about it.
In the past three years alone, Bob, an associate professor of Creative Writing, has published 220 or so poems—about a poem every 4.9 days. Many of these have appeared in the best literary magazines in the country: Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, and so on.
In the spring of 2008, the Library of Congress awarded Bob's fifth book, This Clumsy Living, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry—the only poetry prize awarded by the nation. The prize recognizes the best book of poetry published by an American in the past two years. An earlier book, The Legend of Light (1995), won the Felix Pollak Poetry Prize, and another, Animal Soul (2001), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Bob’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, (most recently in May 2008 ("A Primer") and December 2008 ("As I Was Saying"). He has been favorably reviewed in The New York Times.
Bob was named one of only two Virginia winners of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2008. (The other: scholar Paul Sorrentino, also of Virginia Tech's English Department.) Now Bob is also the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Bob’s poems have been in four issues of Best American Poetry, most recently in 2008, and he will have a poem in Best American Poetry 2009. His poetry appears in scores of other anthologies, including five times in the Pushcart anthology, most recently in Pushcart 2009. (The prestitious Pushcart Prize represents the best publications from small presses.) He has been invited to read in New York, Los Angeles, and many cities in between. Recently, he has been interviewed in The Writer’s Chronicle, been profiled in Poets & Writers, and stared out from the cover of The American Poetry Review. This last is like a shortstop snagging the cover of Sports Illustrated. (Bob likes sports.)
Bob has been quoted as saying, “Poets aren’t famous.” But Google “‘Bob Hicok’ poetry,” and you’ll find more than 23,000 entries, and Wikipedia has an article just about him. Sorry, Bob, but that’s kind of famous.
Although Bob refuses to discuss his celebrity status (“I can’t talk about myself in those terms,” he says), he is not particularly shy about discussing poetry. He is, in fact, a popular interviewee, in print and on line. Some quotes from his recent interviews:
I’m just not happy when I don’t write. It’s about my favorite thing to do. It’s the unifying activity of my life.
I think of poetry—all art, really—as a means to lessen detachment, to connect us more deeply to the world.
I don’t ask students to model their work after other poets, but I want them to be fascinated by other minds, how others have worked their way through language.
I live in a very particular world, the world of Crayola crayons and spam and Spam.
I know some think of me as a humorous poet, but I don’t intend that. I can’t separate what’s serious from what’s funny.
I don’t like my poems for long. That’s just not in the cards for me.
I’m gifted at being nervous in front of people.
I’m [at age 48] still referred to as young by some, mid-career by others, a snappy dresser by all. It’s the spats.
(For one Hicok Q&A, go to http://www.smartishpace.com/home/poetsqa/hicok_answers.html.)
Sometimes into the middle of lanky, loose-sentenced poems, Bob drops spare, memorable one-liners, and a few might serve here to further illuminate him and his work. So, a few favorites, from the poems of a reluctantly famous man:
Every time I write, I try to hold
the world still by noticing how the world moves.1The way it’s going,
the only way to live on this planet
will be to leave it.2It’s surprising
that pencils and erasers get along
as well as they do.3War is how we convince ourselve
we are peaceful at heart.4Hummingbirds are paintings
of not falling down.4Hope’s a smaller thing on a bus.5
The names of hurricanes
shouldn’t be so pretty you want to kiss them.6[P]eople/are my bibliography.7
[T]he most
dangerous words are the ones we never hear.8
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From “Waiting for my foot to ring,” This Clumsy Living, 2007
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From “After looking up into one too many cameras,” American Poetry Review, Sept/Oct 2005
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From “Duh,” This Clumsy Living, 2007
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From “The naturalist at work,” American Poetry Review, Sept/Oct 2005
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From “Go Greyhound,” Insomnia Diary, 2004
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From “Peoria,” This Clumsy Living, 2007
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From “Panhandling discourse,” American Poetry Review, Sept/Oct 2005
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From “After looking up into one too many cameras,” American Poetry Review, Sept/Oct 2005