The Abridged History of Rainfall

By Jay Hopler

Jay Hopler's second collection, a mourning song for his father, is an elegy of uproar, a careening hymn to disaster and its aftermath. In lyric poems by turns droll and desolate, Hopler documents the struggle to live in the face of great loss, a task that sends him ranging through Florida's torrid subtropics, the mountains of the American West, the streets of Rome, and the Umbrian countryside. Vivid, dynamic, unrestrained: The Abridged History of Rainfall is a festival of glowing saints and fighting cocks, of firebombs and birdsong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: McSweeney's
• Release date: Nov 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781944211363

Reviews for The Abridged History of Rainfall

[dasam-5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jay Hopler’s “The Abridged History of Rainfall” is a collection of good poetry: many fine lines and phrases, imagery that is true and right. Many of the poems have a clear voice that is one we want to listen to. Others play with archaic voices or the stylized voice of Wallace Stevens. Sometimes the poet seems to undermine his own poetic eloquence:

“A squadron of dragonflies is darning the darkening/yard” is a fine line, but the poet then says:

“Correction: a squadron of dragonflies is darning the air above the darkening/Yard” —- not as strong an image or conceit.

Given that these are poems mourning the loss of his father, some seem a bit precious and others a bit cold. Hopler is at his most eloquent in simplicity, as in lEpitaph”:

I cannot tell you
How many years I have done
This.

Last year when I did this,
My father was alive.l

Still and all, I recommend the collection. It is honest more than effete, precise more than ironic. How do you effectively speak the absence. “Abridged” is a game attempt.