National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. What Hicok's getting at [in Elegy Owed ] is both the necessity and the inadequacy of language, the very bluntness of which (talk about a paradox) makes it all the more essential that we engage with it as a precision instrument, a force of clarity, of (at times) awful grace."- Los Angeles Times "[A] fluid, absorbing new collection. . . . Highly recommended."- Library Journal, starred reviewWhen asked in an interview "What would Bob Hicok launch from a giant sling shot?" he answered "Bob Hicok." Elegy Owed -Hicok's eighth book-is an existential game of Twister in which the rules of mourning are broken and salvaged, and "you can never step into the same not going home again twice."From "Notes for a time capsule": The twig in. I'll put the twig in I carry in my pocketand my pocket and my eye, my left eye. A cupof the Ganges and the bacteria from shitin the Ganges and the anyway ablutions of rainbow-robed Hindus in the Ganges. The dawnline of the mountainwith contrail above like an accent in a languagetoo large for my mouth. A mirrorso whoever opens the past will see themselvesin the past and fall back from their facespeaking to them across centuries or hoursor the nearnevers . . . Bob Hicok's worked as an automotive die designer and a computer system administrator before becoming an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech. He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. " | Elegy Owed by Bob Hicok, Paperback | Indigo Chapters