Henry is in the process of transitioning to his new website at hughespoetry.com. Please consult his new website for the latest information on his new books and public reading schedule. Thank you.
Check out the interview with Henry in the Statesman Journal!
Fishing is pure poetry for Henry Hughes
Read Henry’s review of Wayne Harrison’s new novel The Spark and the Drive in Harvard Review Online.
Read an excerpt from Back Seat with Fish: A Man’s Adventures in Angling and Romance, Henry’s forthcoming memoir, in Harvard Review Online
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Like the work of her mentors, James Tate and Dean Young, Shapiro’s poetry is meant to be experienced rather than understood. Speaking to the editors of Jubilat, Dean Young remarked that “to tie meaning too closely to understanding misses the point.” Shapiro’s writing is often untied, yet vivid in its sharp descriptions and loopy wit. There’s a crazy pleasure in following these wild associations where humor remains one of the more tangible rewards. In “Nothing Is More Beautiful When You Try to Make It that Way, Joan Rivers,” we learn that aging celebrities are negotiating to sell a sex tape of “their famous bodies / grinding into each other like hard candy.” Then we hear “you’re not supposed to eat / rock candy, just look through it to see / how pink and crystalized the world becomes.”
“Coming to That is the perfect fulfillment of an artistic life—to live very long and deliberately, to maintain a sharp mind and serviceable body, soaking up a multitude of paintings, films, plays, ballets, operas, books, songs, poems (and, yes, champagne) and bringing it to bear on one’s creative endeavors, right to the very end and into the future.”
3 Good Books invites writers & artists to share their favorite books on a given theme.
“There are dozens of good books involving sport fishing, and many of our greatest authors have found in fishing some of life’s happiest and most painful moments,” notes Hughes, who admits difficulty in narrowing his favorite books on fishing. “Chekhov, Yeats, Ted Hughes, Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Annie Proulx, to name but a few, loved to fish and write about it. Among those essayists who write specifically about fishing, I count David James Duncan, Ted Leeson, Marjorie Sandor, and Thomas McGuane as the best.”
Kirk Deeter reviews Fishing Stories in the Summer 2013 issue of Angling Trade.
“It may, in fact be the most compelling collection of stories on fishing that I’ve ever read. It’s an outstanding mosaic of fishing literature, clearly, carefully selected by editor Henry Hughes…”
Christopher Camuto reviews The Art of Angling in the July, 2012, issue of Gray’s Sporting Journal.
This Everyman Library’s Pocket edition, edited by Henry Hughes, is a warm, witty, and wise collection of excellent verse in which some aspect of the angling passion, or some brooding over rivers, arises and plays itself out.
Gival Press is pleased to announce that Henry Hughes has won the 11th Annual Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award-2012 for his poem titled Action. Read Action.
Henry Hughes 