Insomnia Diary by Bob Hicok

Insomnia Diary Reviews

• 
  Lobstergirl

  I didn't like all these poems equally, but there's no question this man has a gift, and a way of inverting the ordinary.
  
  

  On the calendar the striptease of months,
  dust quietly gathering on the shoulders
  of other dust...

  
  
  and
  
  

  I drove my father for lettuce on the day his wife
  didn't die but that was reasonably his fear.
  His wife is my mother which has to be stated
  
  if facts are what we're here to collect. I often
  forget whole parts of my parents' lives
  have nothing to do with me...
• 
  M.F. Soriano

  One of the best books of poetry I've read. Hicok can hit hard, but he doesn't lose himself in savagery--there's room in his attitude for sensitivity and bemusement. Often, when he does work with a bitter pen, he aims it at his own self, but even there he flavors his vinegar with compassion. Most importantly, Hicok maintains an openness to wonder and a respect for the profound that suffuses every line with a reverent hue. He is able to simultaneously mock and coddle, which is no small achievement. Plus, he does it with a wholly original voice, which leads to lines like (and this is an approximation, since I don't have a copy of the book on hand to refer to) "to huddle around the zirconium's small fire." Have you ever thought to describe a group admiring a wedding ring in that way?
• 
  C. Varn

  Hicok's style remains deceptive: seemingly random and surreal, but often steering into the poignant or sad. The rambling is contained by a naturalistic style that can veer surreal in imaginary but is never pretentious. Some of the strongest lines here will knock your socks off, but the poems do seem to wander even after the lyrical punch is achieved.
• 
  Ryan

  Worth the price of admission for the first poem alone. I read it a dozen or more times, so enchanted by everything in it. This is one collection for anyone even vaguely interested in contemporary poetry. It is shit hot.
• 
  elise amaryllis

  5/5
  i’ve been reading a ton of poetry lately and whili I still feel a little out of place when trying to review/understand it man oh man i love hicok's work. it’s kinda cool to read it at a time where i’m just now figuring out what I want from a poem. and what do i want? still not sure, but whatever hicok is doing in his stuff is great. i love the way he writes about the ordinary. i love the way he writes emotion. some of his stuff is really humorous and some is really touching and sometimes both. it’s just great. obviously some poems were a miss for me but i loved most of the poems in here, and even poems i didn’t like had some beautiful lines. this book also feels almost conversational, reads like a story at some points (idk what I’m saying but it makes sense in my head) and i’m just a big fan.
  
  not quoted, but I also loved “the bald truth” “spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone” & “insomnia diary”
  
  some of my favorite poems & lines:
  
  “That was the day I learned you can sit
  with someone who’s on the bottom
  of the ocean and not get wet.
  By the time he said things were good
  he’d poured twelve sugars into a coffee
  he never touched.”
  
  — Bottom of the ocean
  
  “I drove my father for lettuce on the day his wife
  didn’t die but that was reasonably his fear.
  His wife is my mother which has to be stated
  
  if facts are what we’re here to collect. I often
  forget whole parts of my parents’ lives
  have nothing to do with me.”
  
  — Small purchase
  
  “Happiness is the technical term
  for what ensued, a week of touching
  and talking and sweeping the floors
  
  together and how wonderful it can be
  to take out the trash, the only weight
  he felt were his socks, without them
  
  he’d have floated off, he almost believed
  this was the feeling he’d carry
  to his grave, that lips and fingerprints
  
  are wealth.”
  
  — Capital crime
  
  “I want to remember
  the first time I heard music and knew
  I was hearing music, and the first time
  I heard music and had no idea what it was.”
  
  — Now and then I am direct
  
  “I remember things about eight
  That might be relevant here
  like not remembering anything about eight.
  
  I’ve seen pictures. I had
  exploding hair and must have loved
  the earth because I wore dirt
  to every occasion.
  
  Hiding should be the career of a child
  Breaking things
  is good or licking rocks.”
  
  — Growing at the speed of fashion
  
  “But what sadness
  pushes stars to suicide? In truth
  they’re rocks, we call them stars
  to speak kinda of the dead.”
  
  — Meteor shower
  
  “He got the last pizza
  at lunch and was touched on the wrist by a girl
  at the fountain. This made him believe he was real
  in a way breathing never had. Over the next
  few months he stopped feeling he lived
  on the wrong side of the mirror.”
  
  — The edge
  
  “I was happier sweating
  because it proves the body’s made of rain.
  I was happier hallucinating a beach
  
  because I’m a better man
  in the presence of a water slide.”
  
  — Cure for the common cold
• 
  Richard

  Hicock’s poems are a jigger of James Tate with a sprinkling of Donald Barthelme. Some poems engage their conceit in the title, perhaps even before the title, leaving you sometimes with a wondrous sense of imbalance, clutching at the world of the poem to make sense of where you are. But these poems don’t really go to the length of absurdity, unless the world around us is absurd (a fair point). In a poem about public work, for example, a public figure expects a bribe to move a rock back from the side of the road that someone intends to move it from, making for a classic catch-22 of expecting a bribe for work that is not only not yet done, but A bribe for work not to be done in the first place. There are also poems of love in here, of anguish, so there are a few I will be coming back to, but sometimes that aforementioned wall just remains there through the poem.
• 
  G.J. Fricano

  Not my favorite of his collections, but still a worthwhile venture into Hicok's bizarre reflections of life and sex.
• 
  Sheri Fresonke Harper

  Bob Hicok's style tends toward a burst of words that is close to a rant but I would say it was more full of emotional vigor. The pieces focus on unusual times, places, and connections in his life. Some of the pieces are quite funny. Two poems tell of having to layoff and rehire a man in all the emotional turmoil that generates between the boss and employee, for example. The fun part of these poems is the slice of American life that comes out clearly in the reading. I could only read a few at a time because they spun off too many thoughts, definitely a good find for poets and readers for their keep shelf.
• 
  Mark

  I had read many Hicok poems before picking up Insomnia Diary and have always really liked his work. For anyone unfamiliar with Hicok, he has a witty, conversational style that belies the surprising depth of his lyrical insights. Unfortunately, Insomnia Diary shows what a thin line such a style treads between accessible inspriration and amateurish rhythmic talking. Although there were several good poems in the volume, there were also several not so good ones that wore on your nerves after a while (very similar to reading bad Bukowski). I highly recommend Bob Hicok, but I also recommend starting with a different volume.
• 
  Gina

  A "few" favorite lines:
  
  "[I]f I give a job to one stomach other/forks are naked."--"Calling him back from layoff"
  
  "All the while feeling air's/a quilt of tongues, that spaces/between words are more articulate/than words."--"Bars poetica"
  
  "But what sadness/pushes stars to suicide? In truth/they're rocks, we call them stars/to speak kindly of the dead."--"Meteor shower"
  
  And what I need printed on something or at least on hand to quote in the future:
  
  "My contribution/to the common good is playing/with the alphabet in a little room/while the world goes foraging/for food."--"Truth about love"
• 
  P.

  Bob Hicok's poetry caught me in the Believer magazine and the New Yorker. It was really arresting. So I was looking forward to reading a book of it. And this was more staid than I was expecting. But I'm thinking maybe this is earlier work, because there are hints of Things To Come.
  
  Not that this is a terrible collection. Just that these poems sit on the page and wait to be read and my favorites of his rush along and carry you with them.
• 
  Joanna

  Hicok's poem "Bottom of the Ocean" is knock-the-wind-out-of-me good. I think of the lines: "He said that she said /we're all out of evers without explaining /who she was or how many evers we had /to begin with or where they were kept. /I slept with an extra blanket that night." pretty much every single day.
• 
  Autumn

  My new favorite poet.
  
  I enjoy poetry that is technically masterful and shows a clear gift with language without the "look at me showing off my 12 English degrees!" kind of convoluted snobbery. Hicok is it--approachable, relatable, and just plain fun to read. It deals with heavy themes with the perfect amount of bemusement and self-depreciation. I would recommend this word porn to everyone.
• 
  Valerie

  I like Hicok's conversational tone along with his humor. His poems seem in love with life. It is contagious.
  
  My favorite poems from this book:
  
  The edge
  Meteor shower
  Spirit ditty of no fax-line dial tone
  An old story
• 
  James

  "It's hard being in love
  with fireflies. I have to do
  all the pots and pans."
  
  Funny poems, lots of good energy from the line breaks, most are big single-stanza things, the voice starts to sound a little samey-samey.
• 
  Msryanpaula

  Come on people, read some poetry. You're not well-read without it!
• 
  Sara Kearns

  There is so much humanity in Bob Hicok's books. Sooo much. I bow before him and worship at his alter daily. He's brilliant -- intellectually, linguistically, and emotionally.
• 
  Timothy

  Good poetry collection. Speaks of his past life as a drug user/dealer among other ideas (the workplace, being old). Reminds me a bit of Dean Young. Good read.
• 
  Simona

  whimsical, clever and downright reverent in places, without being too heavy-handed.
• 
  Eddie Watkins

  Good enough but maybe he should prose it instead
• 
  Deja

  Good, readable poems.
• 
  Sara

  The language in this book, the use of words, is sometimes magical, in that it seems effortless, as if it is a given yet, totally new to the brain.
• 
  Timothy Green

  One of my favorite books.
• 
  Travis

  My favorite book of poetry, though I haven't read enough.