This is an auction for one LP record titled  

Russell Hoke 
SELECTED POEMS 

Red Wheelbarrow Records 2010

record grades NM

cover grades EX-

MORE SAN ANTONIO TEXAS WEIRDNESS !!! "On the title page of Russell Hoke's Collected Poems, you'll see that the book was published by a mysterious entity called The Alchemical Guild. That's not just meaningless whimsy; though he doesn't write while surrounded by volatile gases and Buchner flasks, his is an alchemical process.

I saw Russell's manuscript before it was translated into book form, and it filled an entire suitcase. This was the prima materia that, after months of being reworked, rearranged, marked up in pen and pencil, and transported from San Antonio to St. Louis and back again, was distilled into a mighty, Blakean document pressed between blue cloth covers.

Now these poems, after all that careful microsurgery, come to life on this recording. Russell is also a musician, and his lines never stumble, never fall victim to that inelegant clunking so common to modern poets (even those who submit themselves to working with rhyme and meter). Though these poems have an inherent elegance arising from their classical poetic form and use of mythology, there is also an element among them that I can describe only as "Hokean." As the narrator in "Trickster" tells us, "Our egg has chicken physics on the run." It's difficult to know how to read poetry properly without apprenticing one's ear to poets like Louis MacNeice, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath and T.S. Eliot. Russell, who is a careful archivist, owns more poetry on vinyl than anyone I have ever known. He has thrown himself into making poems that please the ear, as poetry was originally engineered to do."

 Any questions about this item or condition please email me. I will do my best to answer any and all questions.

High bidder pays $0.00 for shipping, handling for United States delivery. 

Foreign bidders please email for ship quote.

 Item will be well packed in a sturdy mailer designed for safe LP record shipment.

 Item will be shipped via USPS Mail and no other methods.

I accept PAYPAL as payment.

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. Happy bidding and good luck!