Insomnia Diary

[Hicok] writes with an honest man's happy discontent. . . . His poems stand on that inconvenient ground where the absurd and romantic visions battle for the voice and transmit the full joyful and afflicted human creature. He is one of the finest poets to have emerged in the last ten years.

The sophisticated jester of these soliloquies, dumbfounded by the simplicity and complexity of life, is on a hang glider headed straight for Olympus.

In his fourth collection, Hicok writes with a newfound maturity and an appealing lack of obsession with self, examining the joys and pains (mostly pains) of ordinary others.

The most potent ingredient in virtually every one of Bob Hicok's compact, well-turned poems is a laughter as old as humanity itself, a sweet waggery that suggests there's almost no problem that can't be solved by this poet's gentle humor.

Hicok comes across as the smart, quiet guy in school that everybody listens to. The language is everywhere dynamic, varied, and surprising. And most surprising of all, there seems not to be a weak line in the entire book.

Hicok's style is so vivid, so wonderfully glib, that despite his theme or focus, what we admire about him isn't what he writes about, but the way he writes about it. . . . The one thing I've always liked about all of Bob Hicok's poetry is the way he shocks and muses, throws the reader back on his or her feet, makes him or her smile, and pulls us all into the absurdity of his poetic conceits. . . an admirable an talented poet.

In Insomnia Diary. . . the poet's characteristically clever turns of phrase and self-depreciating humor are complemented by an added tenderness in both tone and subject matter. . . . It is Hicok's ability to combine lyrical moments with statements of simple truth that gives Insomnia Diary its strength.