As the Texas Poet Laureate of 2000, James Hoggard writes beautifully on themes of love, loss, and nature. His unique voice, visual imagery, and carefully crafted syntax take his audience on a journey from Texas to Paris, Taos to Rome, and into their own pasts. Here’s a brief poem titled “Drought” based on his experiences in the stark West Texas landscape. So go ahead and call this place the place that gets no rain because no rain falls here though memories say rains have been here – they’ve swept through ditches, they’ve flooded lawns and drowned roads so we’ve had rains, a lot of rains, and with rain winds strong enough to rip ceiling joists loose and hurl barn roofs away.

James Hoggard: New and Selected Poems (TCU Texas Poets Laureate Series)

Literature & Fiction

Hoggard, James

Poetry

TCU Press

Even a place as big as Texas is ultimately made up of small things: a rugged mesquite shrub, a fruitless mulberry tree, a decaying neighborhood park with a polluted creek. When you place a rabbit in the shade of that mesquite, or a ring of Stars-of-Bethlehem blooming at the base of the mulberry, or some boys in the park attempting to fly a box kite, or especially when you begin to explore memories triggered by the sights and smells of these small pieces of the mighty Southwest, then you begin to find what makes Texas or any place real: stories — James Hoggard’s stock in trade. This collection of tales represents Hoggard’s nearly thirty-year contribution to Texas literature. As with Larry McMurtry’s In a Narrow Grave, Hoggard’s ruminative and witty tales link issues of time, place, culture, and language. Riding the Wind connects nasty Texas weather and life on the inhospitable plains with the need to tell stories. “Sandstone and Ice: Memory and Sight” revives a childhood memory of a rattlesnake-ridden sandstone hill and the frozen pond at its base and uses the image as a metaphor for the narrative powers of memory. Many of the stories, such as “Back There, Passing Through,” are poignant meditations on time and place set in familiar Texas towns. This collection is not limited to regional topics, however as is evident in “Letter from Nineveh,” a powerful account set in the Middle East, where Hoggard was a visiting scholar just before the start of the Gulf War. Hoggard’s unpretentious, self-deprecating, and funny narrative voice and his original and insightful observations on the human condition will delight any reader — from native Texans to those who have never set foot in the Lone Star State.

Riding the Wind and Other Tales (Volume 9) (Tarleton State University Southwestern Studies in the Humanities)

United States

Texas A&M University Press

Trotter Ross: A Novel

Thorp Springs Pr

Conjuring the voice of Edward Hopper, this powerful collection of poetry investigates the mind of an iconic American painter. Lyrical and beautifully crafted, the poems convey both frightening and amusing messages as "Hopper" commentates on his own paintings—from the iconic Nighthawks to his depiction of his wife and himself taking a final bow in Two Comedians—as well as those of other artists. Shocking in their honesty, these poems also provide a window into the American Modernist period due to their biographical nature and evaluations of the visual arts.

Triangles of Light: The Edward Hopper Poems

Wings Press

The Mayor's Daughter

In the north Texas oil-boom town of Kiowa Falls, civilization is just beginning to overtake frontier chaos. Ru-Marie, the daughter of the town’s mayor, is a well-read, young romantic and budding artist. Her tastes in love—her parents insist—are less refined. As they throw off the sham of sophistication, a family war erupts and, with it, frontier justice. Set in the 1920s, this novel utilizes several means in order to recount the intriguing events, including first-person accounts, letters, an interview, and murder trial excerpts.

Genre Fiction

Trotter Ross

Wings Pr

Elevator Man: The Bobby Johnson Story

Biographies & Memoirs

E Heart Pr

Breaking an Indelicate Statue

Classics

Small Pr Distribution

Playing with Illusion

Latitudes Press

Rain in a sunlit sky: Prose poems

Page One Publications

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Books by Hoggard, James