December Column

First published in The Evening Sun on December 26, 2010:

Last month, on November 23, as the sun set over the steep cobbled streets of Old San Juan in Puerto Rico, poets from all over the island gathered in Poets’ Passage, a weekly reading series in the heart of San Juan. However, that week, the poets were in for a special treat.

A visiting poet from Hanover, PA and former Poet Laureate, Michael J. Hoover, took the stage to read from his newly released book, “Better Left Unsaid.” Released November 15, all the poets took pleasure in celebrating his first official reading from the text and his accomplishment in publishing his first book of poems. Best of all, everyone in the room relished the opportunity to see the world through Hoover’s eyes and words.

One of the best images to describe a poets’ vision is a sunglass lens. Just as they come in different colors and shades and shapes, each poet has a different lens that allows him or her to see the world in a specific way.

If you could wear Hoover’s poet sunglasses, you would see everything in moonlight. Although one of his favorite images, the moon, appears in his first book, all of his poems live in their own sense of lighting. Though the light is sometimes eerie, sometimes soft, his nights are always crisp and clear.

The moon has definitely influenced “Better Left Unsaid.” Hoover describes one poem, “Keening Moon,” as “a love poem.” He took the “images from the year [he] spent watching the moon every night on walks.” His nightly routine certainly layered this poem with much color and emotion.

Keening Moon

Your waning weighs
each day as you ascend
burdened with summer.

Frozen eyes plead with an empty sky.
Your voiceless cry almost unseen;
orange blush pales to pastel yellow--

O sculpted lunacy,
marbled face
in seasonal sorrow,
don't fade to white this August night--
wait on the promise of harvest.

In the forward to his book, former Poet Laureate Dana Sauers writes: “’Better Left Unsaid’ is a poetic statement of unabashed courage that dares plumb the waters of self and other-examination while also relating universal relevancy, a place where even ‘tainted certainty’ must be acknowledged. His images are at once clear and precise. The works combine both subtle and raking sounds to produce a genuinely holistic experience.”

She continues, “Michael J. Hoover is a master of symbol, irony and tempered, periodically restrained, tone; his commentary ranges from the serenade of heart's song through the satirical to the sardonic. His vision acknowledges an acceptance of ‘God’s purse where there is no change.’”

The book’s title “Better Left Unsaid” manifests itself in several ways throughout the poems. In fact, one of Hoover’s poems has the same title. As poets, themes become so important to our work, and it amazes us how fluidly themes can run through a collection of our work.

Of his theme of leaving things unsaid, Hoover writes, “Isn’t the second half of art, and for that matter truth, and perhaps life, what is not presented, or revealed, or lived? Isn’t it what our brain absorbs and stores for mulling in recollection or imagination? A memory is formed not only by what we are conscious of at a particular time, but also by what the subconscious senses.

We may consciously be taking in words, and the pictures or images they stimulate, yet be unaware that we are soaking in the sounds of words as well, which may enrich the experience, perhaps without our being fully aware of the particulars.”

He continues, “So, by extension, the poems in “Better Left Unsaid” present themselves as comments about relationship, literally, by what the audience can take away from each narrative and the collective narrative, and also figuratively, by applying the poems to their own experience or merely by enjoying the structure or sound or individual images or metaphors and simply being satisfied or made curious by the manipulation of language and its subsequent effects.”

I hope each of you has the opportunity to experience this relationship with Hoover’s poetry. “Better Left Unsaid” is available at Xlibris.com, and Hoover will read from his new book in Annapolis on January 8, 2011 at Ahh! Coffee at 6:30 p.m. and at Gunnar Gallery in Gettysburg sometime later in January. Then, on March 23, 2011, Hoover will read at the Lancaster Poetry Exchange at the Lancaster Barnes and Noble at 7:30 p.m.