Daryl Hine's first wholly new collection of poetry in almost twenty years is a series of some three-hundred, ten-line lyric poems, linked by and flowing through the ampersand, which gives the book its title. The poems flit from thought to thought, from the philosophical to the mundane. They are autobiographical without ever being confessional, in what is ultimately a cycle of loss and wonder. Written by a poet for whom form is a natural setting, Daryl Hine alerts us to the interconnectedness of living in our common era, evoking these through wit and learning, with the assurance of a great master.
close this panelPraise for Daryl Hine
"At certain moments, in reading him, one has the startled sense that language has arrived at a kind of impasse which only a quick scintillation of wit - in the form of a sly rhyme, a subtle pun or an extravagant rhetorical flourish - can grace, if not elude. As a result, Hine's poems, unlike the brittle pirouettes of the formalist, seem to take shape, in all their glistening eloquence, hot from some secret forge...Hine succeeds at something which once was commonplace but has now become sadly rare: he writes poems which give pleasure to the reader."
-Eric Ormsby, Canadian Notes & Queries
"Hine's robust language?gleams with what sonneteers used to call sprezzatura, the confident, making-it-look-easy gloss that greases great art."
-Jason Guriel, Poetry
