This Clumsy Living. By Bob Hicok. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. $14.00 (pa.)

Convenient as it may seem, I think that one thing that sets Hicok apart as a poet is that he has some life experience to draw from. He didn't learn how to write by committee; he worked in the automotive industry for twenty years before becoming a poet. Since then, he's published four collections, received two Pushcarts, appeared in three volumes of Best American Poetry, and now teaches at Virginia Tech.

There is a working class sensibility in these poems—by that I mean that Hicok knows that the biggest concerns of many people are the necessities of life (food, medicine, etc) but Hicok's narrators are also concerned with the necessities of the mind. In "Green of the Day" Hicok describes a character who has been laid off and is job hunting: "…every fourth thought/is why do board members at Delphi get three hundred K/per annum to cut wages by two thirds, why is Verizon/ dropping pensions with a profit of seven billion/last year, picture…going to the bank and asking for that in ones. I'm sorry,/ you're hoping to imagine rent, what fold in time/ five hundred and seventy dollars will appear from." Hicok steps away from a description that could be trite or preachy and reveals an understanding of the realities of his audience. We are concerned with our own situations, but there is a world beyond what's in front of us, also, and Hicok balances these two ideas very well.

The book is organized into five sections, each identifying a cliché: "Twenty-three Windows", "Thirty-two dreams", etc. In the poem, "A Letter: The Genesis Poem" Hicok points out these familiar words that he tends to use, revealing a self-deprecating sense of humor. He then takes words from Genesis and re-groups them into lines, such as "And to every bird and evening cattle let there be yielding." It is a window, if you will, into the creative process; these ideas and themes are, of course, not necessarily new.

Aside from being clever and often humorous, these poems display an emotional depth. These aren't esoteric poems. Hicok deals with death, loss, suffering and inhumanity on a personal level. He's grounded in the cruelties the world can and often does inflict. In "Waiting for my foot to ring," Hicok describes a narrator waiting for news of his father's colon cancer surgery: "I was told about a poet who wrote a poem the day/his wife was put in a box and given to the ground/like it was Christmas. The person telling me…thought the poet was sick/and I thought the poet had a mind that only lived/in his hands." Even when dealing with profound situations, Hicok doesn't devolve into trite sentimentality or emotional blackmail, and it is in moments like this, in which he joins the mind and heart, that he truly shines. And there are many such moments.

-CL Bledsoe