Possum Pouch: Book Plug: Back Roads to Small Towns

December 01, 2004

Book Plug: Back Roads to Small Towns

Recently published by Lucky Tiger Press, copies of Austin poet W. Joe Hoppe's Back Roads To Small Towns are now available. It's a small, staple-bound chapbook with photos by SJ (a brief signature, for sure). Regionally specific, Hoppe examines the topography and social transformation of three small towns in Central Texas: McDade, Giddings and Dime Box. Photos show water towers, train crossings, abandoned lots and other "embarrassed landscapes," to borrow Werner Herzog's description, around these small town ruins.

Written in spare, epigrammatic verse, Hoppe takes snapshots in words to correlate with the accompanying images. Ideally, there would be a deeper dive into the humble conditions he exploits for his poetry. The pathetic condition of decay could reveal much of an extended lore and possibility latent in the geographic setting. The writing also needs an energy that transcends the negative dump of its object. To get beyond the surface impression, language roots inward, and it's this inwardness I seek, and miss. The compression one might expect, as suggested in the nod to Basho in the title, often is misstated as brevity.

As an initial dig into a region dear to me, the book is marvelous. The relation of abandoned spaces is extended with quick historical backgrounders. As a work that explores immediate ground, Hoppe's project is admirable, a contribution to American Studies and regional transformation. Its stark verse, flat as the voices of the space it relates, mimetically responds to these landscapes. It renews my curiosity in what we abandon, and what we are willing to retrieve. (DS)

Contact me for copies, or go direct to Lucky Tiger: 1417 Ridgehaven Drive, Austin, Texas 78723

Posted by Dale at December 1, 2004 02:06 PM

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