The Universe You Swallowed Whole
poems
The poems in this collection fly from the microcosm of ripples in a lake to the macrocosm of light bending in a black hole, from math to jazz, from informal to formal, from the here-and-now to the hereafter. This short book contains an infinite universe—one that you will long to return to again and again.
(Cover art by Jamey Grimes)
Amazon (print, ebook, & audio book)
Audible (narrated/produced by Kristina Fuller Yuen)
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“The word for Hughes’s short collection is cosmic. The poems swirl from Mandelbrot to Billy Bowlegs to Dave Brubeck, in a style that is by turns imagist, traditionally formal, and startlingly experimental. This voice—intelligent, wryly funny, wounded but healing—makes you sit up and listen.”
—Gordon Johnston, co-author of Ocmulgee National Monument: A Brief History with Field Notes
“Hughes’s poems are a search for truth. Tracing their way through humor, math, family discussion, jazz, the cosmos, and mortality, they ask questions about who we are, what we mean, and why we are here. Although the book is made up of individual poems, they really exist in conversation—asking questions, teasing out answers, and considering alternative possibilities and outcomes. The universe in Hughes’s book is an ephemeral one—holding together for just long enough to appreciate its beauty.”
—Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco, author of the chapbooks Various Lies, Lion Hunt, and Water Weight
“The ‘universe’ these poems inhabit offers us a delicate balance between poetry and anti-poetry, poems both familiar and strange, or strangely familiar. As the poems in this collection collide, something new appears, something both lyric and numeric, surreal and mundane, irreverent and serious. These poems will knock you for a loop—a Möbius loop!—and off your feet, dizzy, dazed, and bedazzled.”
—Martin Lammon, Founding Editor of Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture
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