Wings Press

Hoggard has reached that point in his writing where the ego is worn down to its roots, and the voice is everything. He sings well, clear and loud, a manly dark voice full of the knowledge of dandelions and hard, cold winds.

"I like to think / God's first word / was thunder," begins James Hoggard's Wearing the River, a collection charged with images of North Texas weather. The first half of the book is replete with unanswerable questions: when will a hard freeze, lightning, or drought hit us next? Always we are "Living in Ambiguity," as the title of one poem suggests, and later poems in the book affirm the ability to live with uncertainty. It is human flesh that comforts, "the gestures we share before sleep." Although many of these poems are free verse narratives, the collection includes sonnets and a few particularly appealing pantoums. The book's final pantoum emphasizes what may be Hoggard's theme throughout: "Because the wind here blows insistently / we should be prepared for reversals / We should know how to read the world." Hoggard's simple, at times rather monotonously flat diction is at its best with the repetitions the pantoum requires; the form creates a steadying calm amid the chaos of the harsh weather that gusts through these poems.

Hoggard has reached that point in his writing where the ego is worn down to its roots, and the voice is everything. He sings well, clear and loud, a manly dark voice full of the knowledge of dandelions and hard, cold winds. --Paul Christensen from the Foreword to Wearing the River

"I like to think / God's first word / was thunder," begins James Hoggard's Wearing the River, a collection charged with images of North Texas weather. The first half of the book is replete with unanswerable questions: when will a hard freeze, lightning, or drought hit us next? Always we are "Living in Ambiguity," as the title of one poem suggests, and later poems in the book affirm the ability to live with uncertainty. It is human flesh that comforts, "the gestures we share before sleep." Although many of these poems are free verse narratives, the collection includes sonnets and a few particularly appealing pantoums. The book's final pantoum emphasizes what may be Hoggard's theme throughout: "Because the wind here blows insistently / we should be prepared for reversals / We should know how to read the world." Hoggard's simple, at times rather monotonously flat diction is at its best with the repetitions the pantoum requires; the form creates a steadying calm amid the chaos of the harsh weather that gusts through these poems. --The San Antonio Express-News, June 12, 2005: "Poetry works as welcome as an August breeze" by Wendy Barker