Hicok, A Primer in Poetry

When a poet walks in wearing a blue t-shirt, jeans and sneakers any expectation of the pompous, pretentious, poetry reading type is removed. Hicok even says himself, “I hate poetry readings, I can’t pay attention at all…So if you get distracted by anything and everything, don’t worry”. His laid back attitude didn’t reflect at all upon Hicok’s numerous accomplishments.

Hicok is a self-taught poet, but not having a formal education hasn’t hindered him either. He has written 5 poetry books (Insomnia Diary (Pittsburgh, 2004), Animal Soul (2001), Plus Shipping (1998),The Legend of Light (1995), Bearing Witness (1991)) and won 2 Pushcart Prizes, an NEA Fellowship and one of his books was named an ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year and winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. He is currently teaching at Virginia Tech and is the associate professor in the M.F.A. program. In the past he owned a successful auto-die company and taught at West Michigan University part-time.

The influence of his Detroit, Michigan upbringing is everywhere, most noticeably in “A Primer”. In it, Hicok mentions that in Michigan “February is 13 months long”, “the state bird is a chained factory gate”, and “ ‘What did we do?’ is the state motto”. Others of his poems contain his Detroit influence, in “Killing” (a poem not read at the reading) Hicok depicts a boy that wishes he had stronger weapons to kill bigger targets and a boy that wishes he could defeat a bully.

Hicok read poems about life, love, politics, school, and illness. Despite the array of his work, Hicok covers each topic with the same eloquence and relates to every person. The reading began with the poem “Life” immediately putting the listener on the same level as Hicok; He didn’t want anyone to feel left out. His small talk between poems eased the audience into the works and he prefaced some poems with stories about how they related to his life.

Some of the more touching of the poems were “BRCA1”, “Her, My Body”, and “A Primer”. “BRCA1” relates to learning of a friends breast cancer and the title is taken from the gene named for the detection of early onset breast cancer. In “Her, My Body” Hicok again refers to cancer but talks about, with great delicacy, how it effects his life and love for his wife and says that he has “one way/ to be happy/ and she is that way”. “A Primer” referenced life in Michigan and got the whole audience laughing with its truthfulness.

“Let us all be from somewhere”, says Hicok as he ends “A Primer” and his readings for the night. He leaves the audience with a sense of renewed interest in the world, an increasing desire to pay attention to the little things, and a wish to be able to express, so simply, how one feels about everything around them.