| In Glory River, David Huddle's poems pit precise observation,
extravagant language, and humor against despair in an attempt
to find a way to live in a new century in which the values
of the past are dissolving and those of the future are frightening.
Huddle opens with a sequence of exceptional tales about an
imaginary hamlet in the mountains of Virginia. The residents
of Glory River are rough, crude, and full of fight, but eager
to tell their stories, "to explain how / in that place they
had become the people / they were." Huddle also includes a
series of poems exploring modern life, touching upon subjects
as diverse as memory, family, art, politics, and pain. Accessible
and often humorous, the poems in Glory River range
from the strange and extraordinary happenings in the fantastical
Virginia town to the painful, hopeful, and no less magical
situations that can occur in real lives.
from "1970"
. . . the way I see it now
is that I, David R. Huddle,
your basic twenty-eight-year-old,
moderately stoned, white,
liberal grad student, sat
right at the focal point at the exact
moment when the nation
made its final turn away from love
and generosity and toward greed,
hatred of the poor, bullying
the rest of the world, and pillaging
what's left of paradise.
David Huddle is the author of fifteen books
of poetry, fiction, and essays, including The Story of
a Million Years, La Tour Dreams of the Wolf Girl,
Summer Lake: New and Selected Poems, and Grayscale.
He teaches at the University of Vermont, the Bread Loaf School
of English, and the Rainier Writing Workshop.
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