Life at Braintree by Eric Hoffman

“These spare poems, open to the voices of the American past, wonderfully assume an unexpected richness, a wealth of saying.” – Norman Finkelstein author of Track and Passing Over

An Excerpt

9.

The people: ignorant of arts and letters,
Seldom able to frame and support
Regular opposition, gullible and slow

To resist tyranny. This settlement
Nevertheless represents the Opening
Of a grand scene and Design

In Providence, for the Illumination
Of the Ignorant and the Emancipation
Of the slavish Part of Mankind.

About the Author

ERIC HOFFMAN is the author of four collections of poetry, Things Like This Happen All the Time (2000), Threnody (2006), Of Love and Water and There (both 2008). A book, George Oppen: Survival’s Thin, Thin Radiance is forthcoming. He lives in Manchester, Connecticut with his wife, Robin.