Turn Up the Ocean

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>America's Tony Hoagland (1953-2018) was known for provocative poems which interrogate human nature and contemporary culture with an intimate and wild urgency located somewhere between outrage stand-up comedy and grief. The poems in his final collection </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>Turn Up the Ocean</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)> examine with an unflinching eye and mordant humour the reality of living and dying in a time and culture that conspire to erase our inner lives. Hoagland's signature wit and unparalleled observations take in long-standing injustices the atrocities of American empire and consumerism and our continuing habit of looking away. In these poems perseverance depends on a gymnastics of scepticism and comedy a dogged quest for authentic connection and the consolations of the natural world. </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)>Turn Up the Ocean</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(33 37 41 1)> is a remarkable and moving collection a fitting testament to Hoagland's devotion to the capaciousness and art of poetry. Tony Hoagland's poems poke and provoke at the same time as they entertain and delight. He was American poetry's hilarious 'high priest of irony' a wisecracker and a risk-taker whose disarming humour self-scathing and tenderness are all fuelled by an aggressive moral intelligence. He pushed the poem not just to its limits but over the edge.</span></p>