{"id":1334,"date":"2019-06-17T19:17:42","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T19:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/?p=1334"},"modified":"2019-06-17T19:17:42","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T19:17:42","slug":"review-of-the-lord-of-everywhere-by-john-hodgen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/2019\/06\/17\/review-of-the-lord-of-everywhere-by-john-hodgen\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Lord of Everywhere by John Hodgen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lynx House Press,\u00a0Paperback,\u00a062 pages. $19.95<\/p>\n

By Cameron Scott<\/p>\n

Scaffolded around Romans 8:38-39, Hodgen\u2019s Lord of Everywhere<\/em> launches its reader into a constellation of sounds, ideas, things, and images. These are poems built from word seeds, from thoughts which launch back and forth between music and association, association and music, until they find their way toward a lyrical end. However, much like the verses which they serve, these poems don\u2019t necessarily have an ending. They are, more than anything, about the words and worlds which emerge all around Hodgen, creating Hodgen\u2019s everywhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Hodgen distills the verses and main ideas of \u00a0Romans 8:38-39 down into the following sections for his book: \u201c\u2026neither death nor life\u2026\u201d \u201cnor angels\u2026\u201d \u201cnor principalities, nor powers\u2026\u201d \u201cnor things present, nor things to come\u2026\u201d \u201cnor height nor depth, nor any other creature\u2026 .\u201d In doing so, Hodgen roots his reader with wayposts and a focused direction to read and a lens to experience the myriads of things that compose his world, giving purchase to poems, like grief, that often wander in search of solace and sense.<\/p>\n

Led deeply by music, Hodgen in a poem like \u201cOn Wishing St. Augustine and Jimi Hendrix Were Here\u201d writes:<\/p>\n

Praise Venus at the Half Shell Station. Hail her triumph, her greatness, her girth.<\/em><\/address>\n
Wrap her in raiment, lift her, woman never to be named, electric lady of the fallen earth.<\/em><\/address>\n
Come back to us now, Voodoo Child, Lord of Grace. Find us in this broken place.\u00a0<\/em><\/address>\n

 <\/p>\n

What I love most in Hodgen\u2019s poems is how often they lose themselves to music, to the constellation in Hodgen\u2019s life. Some of the music lands and takes root, others times it appears uncontrollable and breaks into itself as in his poem \u201cTwenty-Two.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cassius beat Liston, Salinger was drafted, Hemmingway went to Paris, Byron turned blue<\/em><\/address>\n
crossing the Hellespont. And you, and you, twenty-two, everyone asking, What do you do?, <\/em><\/address>\n
each day getting longer, the tightened thumbscrew, the koo koo kachoo, this rue for you,<\/em><\/address>\n
this solid flesh, this pistol shot, this too, too. Adieu, adieu, the ululu, the constant queue\u2026<\/em><\/address>\n

 <\/p>\n

At its best, and these poems are often at their best, Hodgen\u2019s poetry in Lord of Everywhere<\/em> evokes an emotional and occasionally physical reaction to the way they unfold. A power rises from the melodies and rhythms, while over the course of these poems the reader is exposed to countless snippets of cultural references, skyscraper sequences which build on top of each other, one after the other, into a bustling cultural landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lynx House Press,\u00a0Paperback,\u00a062 pages. $19.95 By Cameron Scott Scaffolded around Romans 8:38-39, Hodgen\u2019s Lord of Everywhere launches its reader into a constellation of sounds, ideas, things, and images. These are poems built from word seeds, from thoughts which launch back and forth between music and association, association and music, until they find their way toward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":1341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[160,204,206,205],"class_list":["post-1334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-contemporary-american-poetry","tag-john-hodgen","tag-lynx-house-press","tag-the-lord-of-everywhere"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1334"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1342,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334\/revisions\/1342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}