Winner of the Unicorn Press First Book Competition, WINTER INLET is a lyrical and gritty portrait of coastal life. In these incisive poems, Hastings Hensel finds connections between the working of memory and the slicing of a knife through the body of a caught fish, between a shadowy loiterer on the waterfront and a lost father. In these poems, the sun-bright and restless ocean leads us back into the past, and in that return they assure us of an original way forward.
"Hastings Hensel is one of the most accomplished young poets now writing in this country. His wordplay and soundplay are intricate, deft, ingenious, calling up models from Hopkins to Merrill. The frequency of titles in this book containing the word Arrangement hints at his remarkable formal gift; he demands, though, that poetry's high-spirited games also expose the plainest, deepest feelings. And the seagoing settings of WINTER INLET highlight how much Hensel has learned from the ebb and flow of experience."--Mary Jo Salter, co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Poetry
"I did not know that the Carolina coast needed its defining poet until I read Hasting Hensel's WINTER INLET and realized it already has one--and one fully worthy of a place 'where rare clusters / of starfish wash up again like old dreams.' In these taut meditations, Hensel makes the coastal land and seascapes come vibrantly alive--a world where 'all is tidal.' WINTER INLET is as impressive a debut as I've read in years."--Andrew Hudgins, author of A Clown at Midnight
"The poems in this moving book quietly come to terms with loss, meaning, and love. Yet, the complexities of personal life register as shadows in a far more specific world of water and trees and creatures. The outer world is, rightly, fluid and continuous. The poet's task is to find the language and the rhythms of human contemplation necessary to embrace the gifts of that outer world. And this poet fully delivers the right language--drawing on the clicks and thuds and groans of the Anglo-Saxon roots of English. The language of this particular art is hard and hand-hewn, the actions of a body participating in the world. There is fine observation here, rich discovery, but the richness of the language makes all of that encounter visceral. And that living drama sets the stage for the reader to sense a presence, a presence that goes unnamed but is surely felt. It is a pleasure to have this book in the world, dare I say, it's good for the tired old human soul."--Maurice Manning, author of The Common Man
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