Elegy Owed

National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.

Paterson Award for Literary Excellence.

What Hicok’s getting at [in Elegy Owed] is both the necessity and the inadequacy of language, the very bluntness of which (talk about a paradox) makes it all the more essential that we engage with it as a precision instrument, a force of clarity, of (at times) awful grace. -Los Angeles Times

[A] fluid, absorbing new collection… . Highly recommended. -Library Journal, starred review

When asked in an interview What would Bob Hicok launch from a giant sling shot? he answered Bob Hicok. Elegy Owed-Hicok’s eighth book-is an existential game of Twister in which the rules of mourning are broken and salvaged, and you can never step into the same not going home again twice.

From Notes for a time capsule :

The twig in. I’ll put the twig in I carry in my pocket and my pocket and my eye, my left eye. A cup of the Ganges and the bacteria from shit in the Ganges and the anyway ablutions of rainbow- robed Hindus in the Ganges. The dawnline of the mountain with contrail above like an accent in a language too large for my mouth. A mirror so whoever opens the past will see themselves in the past and fall back from their face speaking to them across centuries or hours or the nearnevers …

Bob Hicok’s worked as an automotive die designer and a computer system administrator before becoming an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech. He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.