Second Empire

Second Empire

<div>"The delicate arc of these poems intimates--rather than tells--a love story: celebration, fear of loss, storm, abandonment, an opening forth. Richie Hofmann disciplines his natural elegance into the sterner recognitions that matter: 'I am a little white omnivore,' the speaker of <i>Second Empire </i>discovers. Mastering directness and indirection, Hofmann's poems break through their own beauty." -- <b>Rosanna Warren</b></div><div></div><br><div>This debut's spare, delicate poems explore ways we experience the afterlife of beauty while ornately examining lust, loss, and identity. Drawing upon traditions of amorous sonnets, these love-elegies desire an artistic and sexual connection to others--other times, other places--in order to understand aesthetic pleasures the speaker craves. Distant and formal, the poems feel both ancient and contemporary.</div><div><br><b>Richie Hofmann </b>is the winner of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the <i>New Yorker</i>,<i> Poetry</i>, the <i>Kenyon Review</i>, and <i>Ploughshares</i>. He received his MFA from Johns Hopkins University and is currently a doctoral student in English at Emory University.</div>