After holding the prestigious Kingsbury Fellowship at Florida State University and landing a professorship at Western Kentucky University, Tom C. Hunley published two volumes of poetry in 2004:
The Tongue
, described by Philip Dacey as having "the kind of insouciance praised by Whitman and practiced by a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd", and
Still, There's a Glimmer
, which Barbara L. Hamby called a collection of "shout-out-loud poems." Hunley followed that up in 2008 with
Octopus
, winner of The Holland Prize, which Thomas Lux praised for its "completely unsentimental poems about children and marriage; angry poems and poems of deep gratitude; poems both comic and dark (often simultaneously); and maybe most of all a clear, original, passionate American voice." His fourth collection,
Plunk,
published in 2015, was described by Lynn Domina as "ironic and loquacious and wily. . . . energetic and energizing, and, basically, fun to read and to read aloud." Hunley followed that up with two project books:
The State That Springfield Is In
(2016), consisting of forty dramatic monologues in the voices of characters from The Simpsons; and
Here Lies
(2018), consisting of forty-nine self-epitaphs. Of the former, Jason Bredle wrote "The results are not only playful and fun, but also deeply autobiographical, with deftly focused attention to formal diversity and voice." Of the latter, Bob Hicok wrote that [Hunley's] "cornucopian appetites are served by an imagination of equal scope."
What Feels Like Love: New and Selected Poems
brings together the highlights from Hunley's six previous full-length collections, along with a selection of new poems that grapple with the challenges of raising an autistic son, adopting a teenage daughter from state foster care, and learning of a friend's suicide.