Breathe

Hicok's poetry has long been distinctive for its compassionate breadth of feeling, curiosity, and play. In Breathe, he meets the social and cultural moment, soothing distress with tenderness while meditating on the persistence of love. Hicok writes with candid intimacy and affection to his wife, to his cat, to his dying father, and always to the extraordinary within the quotidian. Playful and absurdist, these poems yet reveal an undeniable longing “to believe in something." Honest in his witness of death and violence, Hicok celebrates the potential for change within each of us. Breathe is a call for stillness—a call “to understand what leaves / are saying to the wind. To be deserving / of the giddyup of your breath."