BECKONED BACK BY HELL-BENT BLACKBIRDS, poetry by H. L. Hix
Publication Date: January 15, 2025
Paperback, 68 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-91-2
In Beckoned Back by Hell-Bent Blackbirds, a surviving “tame” brother laments his dead “wild” brother, in memories organized by the apple orchard onto which their childhood home backed, under a migratory flyway from which birds often called and sometimes fell. What Housekeeping and A River Runs Through It epitomize in prose, Beckoned Back by Hell-Bent Blackbirds proves in poetry, that an account of one sibling lost to another resonates with something elemental in human experience, shared by many, recognizable to all.
Praise for H. L. Hix & Beckoned Back by Hell-Bent Blackbirds
What kind of hallucinatory, combinatory, vector space witchcraft is this, H. L. Hix? If it is math, surely it’s the code for reality. If it is physics, it’s the indeterminate sort, inoculated with quantum states, every idea in every line zipping away before you can pin it down with your thumb. The images circle but aren’t circular, spiral in vanishing patterns and then reappear in knots, handholds for language as world building. Multivariate, algorithmic, calling up an original orchard of shadow and echo and memory humming with the bees retellings, the speaker hangs by a thread, entangled with a lost, unforgettable brother and coming apart during questioning. “I can imagine only what the orchard has imagined.” This book is haunted, sir, and now so am I.
—Karen Donovan, author of Monad+Monadnock
There are certain books of which it is said that once you have read them, you will never be the same again. For Midwesterners, Ross Lockridge, Jr.’s Raintree County is such a book. For New Englanders, Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs. This dark, beautifully written Bildungsroman, set in a mysterious orchard somewhere in the nation’s heartland, will join that company.
—Jared Carter, author of Darkened Rooms of Summer
About the Author
Before his present employment at a state university, H. L. Hix taught at two small private art colleges, so the walls of his writing studio feature work by former colleagues he admires. Every morning as he works, he feels himself in the presence of visionaries, the company of friends.
Publication Date: January 15, 2025
Paperback, 68 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-91-2
In Beckoned Back by Hell-Bent Blackbirds, a surviving “tame” brother laments his dead “wild” brother, in memories organized by the apple orchard onto which their childhood home backed, under a migratory flyway from which birds often called and sometimes fell. What Housekeeping and A River Runs Through It epitomize in prose, Beckoned Back by Hell-Bent Blackbirds proves in poetry, that an account of one sibling lost to another resonates with something elemental in human experience, shared by many, recognizable to all.
Praise for H. L. Hix & Beckoned Back by Hell-Bent Blackbirds
What kind of hallucinatory, combinatory, vector space witchcraft is this, H. L. Hix? If it is math, surely it’s the code for reality. If it is physics, it’s the indeterminate sort, inoculated with quantum states, every idea in every line zipping away before you can pin it down with your thumb. The images circle but aren’t circular, spiral in vanishing patterns and then reappear in knots, handholds for language as world building. Multivariate, algorithmic, calling up an original orchard of shadow and echo and memory humming with the bees retellings, the speaker hangs by a thread, entangled with a lost, unforgettable brother and coming apart during questioning. “I can imagine only what the orchard has imagined.” This book is haunted, sir, and now so am I.
—Karen Donovan, author of Monad+Monadnock
There are certain books of which it is said that once you have read them, you will never be the same again. For Midwesterners, Ross Lockridge, Jr.’s Raintree County is such a book. For New Englanders, Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs. This dark, beautifully written Bildungsroman, set in a mysterious orchard somewhere in the nation’s heartland, will join that company.
—Jared Carter, author of Darkened Rooms of Summer
About the Author
Before his present employment at a state university, H. L. Hix taught at two small private art colleges, so the walls of his writing studio feature work by former colleagues he admires. Every morning as he works, he feels himself in the presence of visionaries, the company of friends.
Publication Date: January 15, 2025
Paperback, 68 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-91-2
In Beckoned Back by Hell-Bent Blackbirds, a surviving “tame” brother laments his dead “wild” brother, in memories organized by the apple orchard onto which their childhood home backed, under a migratory flyway from which birds often called and sometimes fell. What Housekeeping and A River Runs Through It epitomize in prose, Beckoned Back by Hell-Bent Blackbirds proves in poetry, that an account of one sibling lost to another resonates with something elemental in human experience, shared by many, recognizable to all.
Praise for H. L. Hix & Beckoned Back by Hell-Bent Blackbirds
What kind of hallucinatory, combinatory, vector space witchcraft is this, H. L. Hix? If it is math, surely it’s the code for reality. If it is physics, it’s the indeterminate sort, inoculated with quantum states, every idea in every line zipping away before you can pin it down with your thumb. The images circle but aren’t circular, spiral in vanishing patterns and then reappear in knots, handholds for language as world building. Multivariate, algorithmic, calling up an original orchard of shadow and echo and memory humming with the bees retellings, the speaker hangs by a thread, entangled with a lost, unforgettable brother and coming apart during questioning. “I can imagine only what the orchard has imagined.” This book is haunted, sir, and now so am I.
—Karen Donovan, author of Monad+Monadnock
There are certain books of which it is said that once you have read them, you will never be the same again. For Midwesterners, Ross Lockridge, Jr.’s Raintree County is such a book. For New Englanders, Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs. This dark, beautifully written Bildungsroman, set in a mysterious orchard somewhere in the nation’s heartland, will join that company.
—Jared Carter, author of Darkened Rooms of Summer
About the Author
Before his present employment at a state university, H. L. Hix taught at two small private art colleges, so the walls of his writing studio feature work by former colleagues he admires. Every morning as he works, he feels himself in the presence of visionaries, the company of friends.