John Hodgen

John Hodgen is visiting assistant professor of English at Assumption College. He is the author of three previous books of poetry: In My Father’s House, winner of the Bluestem Award; Bread Without Sorrow, winner of the Balcones Poetry Prize; and Grace, winner of the Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Hodgen is the recipient of numerous other awards, including the Foley Poetry Prize, the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, the Grolier Prize, an Arvon Foundation Award, and the Chad Walsh Prize in Poetry.

Grace

By John Hodgen

Winner of the 2005 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry.
Grace is John Hodgen’s third book of poetry. He is a poet of extreme contrasts, offering us the dregs of despair, yet instantly recalling hope in the beauty of nature or in a moment in time when all is right, when we realize grace. In “For the Leapers” the narrator relates, “We will fall past the angels, / we will fall from such height, / our tears will lift up from our eyes. / We will fall straight through hell. / And then we will rise.” Hodgen’s poems roam through history, religion, man-made disasters, baseball, pop culture, and Wal-Marts, on paths that come full circle with remarkable completeness, maturity, and dexterity.