". . . some bacchanalian night I had once at Astor Bar when I tripped down the steps in my sandals and couldn't find the bathroom . . . and then, in the last stanza, he rips my heart out. I don't know how he does it, but it happens repeatedly"

“. . . some bacchanalian night I had once at Astor Bar when I tripped down the steps in my sandals and couldn’t find the bathroom . . . and then, in the last stanza, he rips my heart out. I don’t know how he does it, but it happens repeatedly”

by Ernie on 17/03/09 at 12:55 pm

Actress and famous blogger Sheila O’Malley writes about Sixty Sonnets over at the legendary Sheila Variations:

Here is what I think is special and remarkable about Hilbert’s work: His vocabulary can be daunting, as can his various frames of reference. You wonder if there is anything this man doesn’t know. You, as the reader, must be prepared to leap from ancient Greece to the East Village in one or two lines, and you had better be familiar with the Oresteia as well as Metallica . . . otherwise you will be lost. But none of this comes off as too-clever, or coy. It is truly an expression of who Hilbert is, the breadth and depth of his curiosity and interests, and how his mind works. It is a quicksilver mind, generous and open and humorous and also somehow conservative, in its way, as well—with a respect for all that has passed, the voices that chorus around him, the history of literature.

Read on over at Sheila Variations.