Totem and Shadow

The editor of the anthology POSTMODERN AMERICAN POETRY (Norton, 1994) and the author of six earlier books of poetry, Hoover is credited with helping expand the possiblities for the ironic perspective in American verse. Seeming to find little or no contradiciton between pop irony and lyrical intensity, and often shifting between the two with a remarkable freedom, Hoover writes poems that, according to Ron Padgett, glow with the pleasures of surprise. The selected poems are an ideal starting-place for readers new to Hoover, while the spare and resonant new poems offer his fans yet another slant in a fascinating trajectory.