{"product_id":"9781938584305","title":"Second Empire","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"The delicate arc of these poems intimates—rather than tells—a love story: celebration, fear of loss, storm, abandonment, an opening forth. Richie Hofmann disciplines his natural elegance into the sterner recognitions that matter: 'I am a little white omnivore,' the speaker of \u003ci\u003eSecond Empire \u003c\/i\u003ediscovers. Mastering directness and indirection, Hofmann's poems break through their own beauty.\"—Rosanna Warren\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis debut's spare, delicate poems explore ways we experience the afterlife of beauty while ornately examining lust, loss, and identity. Drawing upon traditions of amorous sonnets, these love-elegies desire an artistic and sexual connection to others—other times, other places—in order to understand aesthetic pleasures the speaker craves. Distant and formal, the poems feel both ancient and contemporary.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAntique Book\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe sky was crazed with swallows.\u003cbr\u003eWe walked in the frozen grass\u003cbr\u003eof your new city, I was gauzed with sleep.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTrees shook down their gaudy nests.\u003cbr\u003eThe ceramic pots were caparisoned with snow.\u003cbr\u003eI was jealous of the river,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ehow the light broke it, of the skein\u003cbr\u003eof windows where we saw ourselves.\u003cbr\u003eWhere we walked, the ice cracked\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003elike an antique book, opening\u003cbr\u003eand closing. The leaves\u003cbr\u003ebeneath it were the marbled pages. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRichie Hofmann \u003c\/b\u003eis the winner of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eKenyon Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003ePloughshares\u003c\/i\u003e. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins University MFA program, he is currently a Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Alice James Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47182034764016,"sku":"9781938584305","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781938584305_p0.jpg?v=1763664506","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781938584305","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}