Some Ones

Poetry. Two points of reference may be useful for orienting readers to the sequence of short works that comprise Nick Hoff's first book of poetry: the poetry of Paul Celan and the cinematic long take—a prolonged perceptual image that's presented with its own movement. These extended lyric moments have the austerity of Celan's, and also something of their innovative verbal intensity. But their emotional register is quite different; it almost invariably surrenders to beauty. The beauty is that of the quotidian miniscule, not the romantic sublime—and it is all the more wonderful for that.