"Where will the accumulations of the daily joys go?" asks the still and tender voice in Angela Hoffman's
Hold the Contraries.
The answer, this collection suggests, depends-not on our ability to control or limit suffering, but on our full surrender to a "broken-open" attention-a frailty that startles each person "back into the world." The quiet courage found here invites us to "live into our answers" by embracing fullness and emptiness, both. A pilgrimage rooted in well-earned wisdom and beauty.
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Lauren K. Carlson
,
inaugural Lorine Niedecker Fellow and author of
Animals I Have Killed
In
Hold the Contraries,
Angela Hoffman explores the paradoxes that life presents. Here are poems of emotional complexity, rapturous imagery, and surprising juxtapositions: "I cut the last of the pink hydrangeas. I cut off intimacy." They acknowledge pain, doubt, "driving in fog, snow, rain, ice," reveal "evening primrose, night phlox / all dancing in their nightgowns." Amid suffering, Hoffman struggles to find peace: "sit in the stillness, / feel earth's tender breath, just like the moth." Both spiritual and deeply human, these poems were "composted in my garden, / turned over and over into wisdom." I savored them; so will you.
Peggy Turnbull
, author of
The Joy of Their Holiness
This is a most enjoyable collection of poems. The works engage the senses and massage all emotions. Angela's skill in a poem's universality shines in "When Clouds Break Open" and "Rain" Her keen observation skills give the reader focus on a wide range of science facts and human interactions. Her personal poems take the reader on the journey of Angela's adult life and finding her voice.
Nancy Rafal,
Door County Poet Laureate 2019-2021