cover image The Domestic Life

The Domestic Life

Hunt Hawkins. University of Pittsburgh Press, $19.95 (101pp) ISBN 978-0-8229-3770-8

This first collection introduces a mature poet whose life experience resonates through his work. The opening poem describes a boy sitting on the porch with his working-class neighbor after having lain in a field with the man's daughter the previous night. Poem after poem is a tribute to a less-than-perfect family--a father who drank himself to death, a good-hearted but awkward stepfather. Love, for this writer, brings with it stunning aspects of the grotesque, as when he considers his daughter's ears. Extending himself beyond the personal, Hawkins is capable of bringing new levels of sympathy to a furniture salesman or a retarded woman skating with a grace above those around her. If only this entire collection were comprised of poems such as these. Instead, readers are treated to melodramatic tidbits, including a lament on out-of-fashion names and a treatise on pennies. Poems in the voice of a whining house-husband stand alongside astute reflections on Chile, China and South Africa. Most distressingly, this strong volume closes on a note of inanity with a poem in which the speaker praises aspects of his cat who, among other things, ``carries no cash'' and ``is unemployed.'' (Jan.)