Allen Hoey (October 21, 1952 – June 16, 2010) was an American
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...
,
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...
, and
literary critic who received numerous honors during his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his 2008 collection of poems ''Country Music''.
[http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/courier_times/courier_times_news_details/article/28/2010/june/19/popular-county-poet-dies-of-heart-attack.html]
Life
Allen Hoey was born in
Kingston, New York
Kingston is a city in and the county seat of Ulster County, New York, United States. It is north of New York City and south of Albany. The city's metropolitan area is grouped with the New York metropolitan area around Manhattan by the United ...
, and raised in the mid-
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...
Valley. He moved to northern
New York to do his undergraduate work, then relocated to
Syracuse, New York to complete his graduate work at
Syracuse University where he studied with
Hayden Carruth
Hayden Carruth (August 3, 1921 – September 29, 2008) was an American poet, literary critic and anthologist. He taught at Syracuse University.
Life
Hayden Carruth was born in Waterbury, Connecticut and grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut. He gra ...
. He received both a Masters (1980) and a Doctor of Arts (1984) in English (Creative Writing). In 1985 he took a teaching position at
Ithaca College
Ithaca College is a private college in Ithaca, New York. It was founded by William Egbert in 1892 as a conservatory of music and is set against the backdrop of the city of Ithaca (which is separate from the town), Cayuga Lake, waterfalls, and go ...
and moved to
Ithaca, New York
Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named ...
in 1986. In 1990 he took a teaching position at
Bucks County Community College
Bucks County Community College (Bucks) is a public community college in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1964, Bucks has three campuses and online courses: a main campus in Newtown, an "Upper Bucks" campus in the town of Perkasie, and a " ...
where he taught writing, literature, and Buddhism.
In 1994 he received the precepts and formalized his commitment to Rinzai
Zen
Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
Buddhist practice. Hoey has two sons by his first marriage, Owen (1980) and Stephen (1984). He died on June 16, 2010. He was a resident of
Solebury, Pennsylvania
Solebury is an unincorporated community in Solebury Township in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States. Solebury is located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Route 263
Pennsylvania Route 263 (PA 263) is a north–south stat ...
just outside
New Hope, Pennsylvania
New Hope is a borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The population was 2,612 at the 2020 census. New Hope is located approximately north of Philadelphia, and lies on the west bank of the Delaware River at its confluence with Aquetong Creek. ...
.
[Contemporary Authors. Gale Online, 2008. PEN (Permanent Entry Number): 0000176580]
Works
Hoey has written five full-length collections of poetry and three novels. His first collection, ''A Fire in the Cold House of Being'', was selected by
Galway Kinnell
Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) was an American poet. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1982 collection, ''Selected Poems'' and split the National Book Award for Poetry with Charles Wright. From 1989 to 1 ...
as winner of the 1985 Camden Poetry Award. This book was published in 1987 and was followed by ''What Persists'' in 1992 and two collections in 2005, ''Provençal Light'' and ''The Precincts of Paradise''. In 2006 he published a novel, ''Chasing the Dragon''. He received a Pennsylvania Council of the Arts literature fellowship, placing his poetry and criticism in many prominent literary journals, including ''The American Poetry Review'', ''The Hudson Review'', ''Poetry'', and ''The Southern Review''. His poem "A Thousand Prostrations" was included in ''Essential Zen'', and another poem, "Essay on Snow," was included in ''The Best American Spiritual Writing of 2004.'' Hoey's second novel, ''Voices Beyond the Dead'', a more politically oriented book, was released in the summer of 2007, and his fifth collection of poems, ''Country Music'', was published in spring 2008.
[Interview with subject, October 2006]
Hoey's subjects include nature, his children, love, jazz, and spirituality. Regardless of the subject, his poems come from what Hoey has described as an "erotics of loss," exploring the evanescent and fleeting quality of life.
[
Of his first collection, ''A Fire in the Cold House of Being'', Hayden Carruth noted: "The directness of Allen Hoey’s poems amounts at times almost to a kind of existential obduracy, the smack of a fist in the palm that means no more bravery, the job is being. Being in the world. When you put this together with Hoey’s marvelous vocabulary and his exacting rhythmic and tonal demands on our language, you get what no academic poetry can ever attain, real pertinence. Nowadays, all of us are reading for our lives, I think. These poems are what we need." Similar praise came from Robert McDowell in a review published in ''The Hudson Review'': "Allen Hoey’s first full-length collection...contains more compassion, diversity, and skill than the fifth book or the tenth book by most older poets. Ranging from free verse to formal structures but never straying far from an anchoring pentameter or tetrameter line, Hoey’s subtle lyricism sounds most like the speech of the straightforward, wry upstate New York and New England folks he prefers to write about…. Hoey seems to know that at the core of the storyteller’s gift is the ability to subordinate one’s ego for the sake of hearing the stories of others. Not an easy thing to do, but the memorable story in poetry always begins there."
Poet David Dooley remarked about his second collection of poems, ''What Persists'': "Allen Hoey's ''What Persists'' takes a leap beyond his own fine first book. Already in ''A Fire in the Cold House of Being'' Hoey demonstrated intelligence, skill with both meter and free verse, a sure sense of poetic shape, and a talent for natural description. Perhaps the two areas in which Hoey has grown the most are technical virtuosity and emotional depth. Not many poets can claim either attribute; fewer still can manage both, so that the technical skill serves as a tool for the exploration of emotion.... Poets who can adroitly handle the stanza form of Yeats' The Wild Swans at Coole (as in "Coole Park," the final poem in ''What Persists'') usually please us by their finesse, not their power. ''What Persists'' offers both finesse and power. With this outstanding second book, Allen Hoey belongs on anyone's short list of the best American poets under the age of sixty."
During the 1980s, Hoey worked as publisher, editor, and printer for Tamarack Editions, a small press that specialized in fine, handset limited editions. Among the works published by Tamarack were ]Hayden Carruth
Hayden Carruth (August 3, 1921 – September 29, 2008) was an American poet, literary critic and anthologist. He taught at Syracuse University.
Life
Hayden Carruth was born in Waterbury, Connecticut and grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut. He gra ...
's ''The Mythology of Dark and Light'' and ''Mother'', as well as ''Kochan'' by Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert (February 18, 1925 – November 13, 2012) was an American poet. Gilbert was acquainted with Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg, both prominent figureheads of the Beat Movement, but is not considered a Beat Poet; he described himself as ...
.
Prior to his death, Hoey was at work on a series of detective novels featuring the character Dan Flannigan and his friend Otis Beaudrieux. Hoey cites his primary influences as writers in the hard-boiled
Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence ...
school, particularly Raymond Chandler and James Crumley. The novels are largely set in Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Bucks County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 646,538, making it the fourth-most populous county in Pennsylvania. Its county seat is Doylestown. The county is named after the English ...
, with some taking place in Central and Northern New York.[ The first of these novels, ''On the Demon's Trail'', was published in March, 2009.
Including Hayden Carruth and Jack Gilbert, among Hoey's other influences on his writing include ]Jim Harrison
James Harrison (December 11, 1937 – March 26, 2016) was an American poet, novelist, and essayist. He was a prolific and versatile writer publishing over three dozen books in several genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, children’s ...
and Kenneth Rexroth.
Bibliography
;Poetry collections
* ''A Fire in the Cold House of Being'' (1987)
* ''What Persists'' (1992)
* ''Provençal Light & Other Poems'' (2005)
* ''The Precincts of Paradise'' (2005)
* ''Country Music'' (2008) (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize)
* ''Once Upon a Time at Blanche's'' (2009)
;Novels
* ''Chasing the Dragon: A Novel about Jazz'' (2006)
* ''Voices Beyond the Dead'' (2007)
* ''On the Demon's Trail'' (2009)
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoey, Allen
1952 births
2010 deaths
People from Kingston, New York
Novelists from Pennsylvania
21st-century American novelists
American male novelists
American literary critics
21st-century American poets
20th-century American poets
Syracuse University alumni
Ithaca College faculty
People from Bucks County, Pennsylvania
American male poets
20th-century American novelists
Journalists from New York (state)
Journalists from Pennsylvania
20th-century American male writers
21st-century American male writers
Novelists from New York (state)
20th-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American male non-fiction writers