Hidden Motion

The poems in Matthew Babcock's Hidden Motion are paeans to the velvet swoosh of all things that move. From maxims of commotion and flamingo pick-up lines to Whitmanesque list poems and short discourses on species, these poems remind us that language was put here to pulse and to surge, to wake and ensoul. The Babcockian lyric combines a heady, distinctive inquisitiveness with mountainous heart mojo. Indeed, the core of this book renders lessons in tending a heart tethered to all living things. In terms of sheer sonic ecstasy, these poems are thrilling: "So many toros / under the mazarine wound of the moon. / So many rivers overgrown in green interludes." There are traces of Gerard Manley Hopkins ("verve of a mad impressionist, / the cloudburst crashing, grazing grey pavement") and Wallace Stevens ("the day was a smudged symphony of silver"), as well as strains of the blues. By the end of this masterful book, I felt wholly remade of its musics.

-Diane Raptosh, author of Dear Z: The Zygote Epistles



If you woke up today wondering where you might find a book of poems that combines the driving rhythms of Sylvia Plath with the wordplay of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the jokes of Henny Youngman (as when a flamingo asks, "Is this front lawn taken?"), look no further. You're going to love these marvelous poems-they never let up.

-David Kirby, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State

University, author of The House on Boulevard Street and Get Up, Please



Like a magpie, Babcock snatches up whatever shines in human experience, filling these poems with shattered windshields, Mozart concertos, flasks of ancient seawater, fried Twinkies, St. Augustine's philosophy, and Danny Elfman's hair. Hidden Motion is wonderfully funny, but through precise language also makes space for sincerity and profundity. These are poems with a formal range as expansive as their intelligence. With the poet's sharp eye, we can see beyond our "many prisons of knowing" to be dazzled by the luminance of an abundant world where "so many swans cover a lake, we stop counting."

-Bethany Schultz Hurst, author of Miss Lost Nation, Winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga

Prize for Poetry