The Father of the Predicaments

By Heather McHugh

Book Overview

Whether sorrowful or sassy, the poems in this new collection bear McHugh's signature: a lively love for the very language she bewares.

Available now in paperback, The Father of the Predicaments is Heather McHugh's first book since Hinge&Sign was selected as a National Book Award finalist and chosen a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and Publishers Weekly. In this witty and deeply felt collection, McHugh takes her cue from Aristotle, who wrote that "the father of the predicaments is being." For McHugh, being is intimately, though perhaps not ultimately, bound to language, and these poems cut to the quick, delivering their revelations with awesome precision

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0819565067
• ISBN13: 9780819565068
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Length: 86 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Wonderful predicaments

Formally innovative and metrically sound without being stuffy, wildly experimental in diction and voice while still being firmly rooted in the vernacular, Heather McHugh's poems are so luminescent they could shine in the dark, and Father of the Predicaments is no exception. An antidote to those who say poetry can't be challenging AND accessible at the same time. I'd also highly recommend picking up Hinge and Sign, her recent New and Selected.