Beyond Silence

Book excerpt: Accepting an award for poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Daniel Hoffman wrote, "Amid private sufferings and outrage at the brutalities of public life, it is gaiety that sustains us, and love, and the imagination's power to create from both deprivation and delight." This collection embodies those emotions and that imaginative power. Hoffman's verse has always exulted in the resources of language, as sensuous in sound as in response to the natural world. Beyond Silence, to be published on Hoffman's eightieth birthday, presents his shorter poems culled from eight previous collections, plus several new poems. Here, rather than in chronological order, they appear thematically and invite the reader to partake of the pleasures that characterize this distinguished poet's verse: "clarity, grace where desired, accuracy of visual detail and dialogue, and a formal mastery so deft that playfulness comes easily" (Fred Chappell). Arriving at last. It has stumbled across the harshStones, the black marshes. True to itself, by what craftAnd strength it has, it has comeAs a sole survivor returns. From the steep pass.Carved on memory's staffThe legend is nearly decipherable.It has lived up to its vowsIf it enduresThe journey through the dark placesTo bear witness,Casting is messageIn a sort of singing. -- "The Poem"