Books
Water Look Away
by Bob Hicok
Copper Canyon, 2023
112 pp., $18.00 (paperback)
In Bob Hicok’s 2023 poetry collection, Water Look Away, the poet does anything but. The collection opens with “Welcome Home,” in which a husband finds his wife in the basement, dangling by her neck:
Holding his wife. Up by
bear-hugging her. Calves, he
listened for. Breath for. Ten
minutes. To this night he
dreams. That in-. Rush of.
Air. Surprised it. Wasn’t
him and. Jealous she got.
There first.
If you are familiar with Hicok’s quirky humor and wildly free associations, you will find the same brain at work here, but in service to a darker vision. These poems try
