Dangerous Goods - by Sean Hill (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

WINNER OF THE MINNESOTA BOOK AWARD

From the poet whose stunning debut was praised as "transcendent" by Kevin Young and "steadily confident" by Carl Phillips, Dangerous Goods tracks its speaker throughout North America and abroad, illuminating the ways in which home and place may inhabit one another comfortably or uncomfortably--or both, simultaneously.

From the Bahamas, London, and Cairo to Bemidji, Minnesota, and Milledgeville, Georgia, Sean Hill interweaves the contemporary with the historical, and explores with urgency the relationships among travel, migration, alienation, and home. Here, playful "postcard" poems addressed to Nostalgia and My Third Crush Today sit alongside powerful reflections on the immigration of African Americans to Liberia during and after the era of slavery. Such range and formal innovation make Hill's second collection both rare and exhilarating. Part shadowbox, part migration map, part travelogue-in-verse, Dangerous Goods is poignant, elegant, and deeply moving.

Review Quotes

There's a satisfaction in the thought of Hill's poems, but also a balance with the real and practical, the feelings that lead anyone to puzzle out their relationships and interactions with colleagues, strangers. Hill shows us the emotions that come from thinking.
--The Rumpus

Advance Praise for Dangerous Goods

"Measuring the 'distance between desires' and the fear and possibilities of displacement, Sean Hill's brilliant new book will make your heart skip 'like those flat stones that kiss the skin / of the pond and fly off again.' Where Hill's first book was an evocation of his Georgia homeplace, Dangerous Goods travels widely and well, from nineteenth-century Liberia to present day Minnesota, from 'Blacks on Boats' to postcards written to nostalgia and regret. Channeling Richard Hugo and Jay Wright, Hill's poignant, pointed poetry is a divining rod, knowing well that the dark is 'an ocean for us all.'"
--Kevin Young

Sean Hill is a fastidious thinker. His poetry takes the facts and figures of history and weaves all of us into its fabric. His imagination soars like a long-winged ancient bird. We ride on his back on every page looking out over the territory of his mind, a tenacious wise flight, worth the wind.
--Nikky Finney, National Book Award winner

Praise for Blood Ties & Brown Liquor

Steadily confident, smart, and surprising. --Carl Phillips

Deeply moving. --Edward Hirsch

Formally various, richly textured. --Mark Doty

[A] transcendent debut. --Kevin Young

Hill's book gave me more hope for American poetry than any other book I read last year. --Jason Koo

A major new voice in American poetry. --Atlanta Journal-Constitution

About the Author

Sean Hill was born and raised in Milledgeville, Georgia, and received an MFA from the University of Houston. He has received fellowships and grants from Cave Canem, the Bush Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, the University of Wisconsin, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Jerome Foundation, and Stanford University where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry. Hill's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, The Oxford American, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and other literary journals, and in the anthologies Blues Poems, Gathering Ground, The Ringing Ear, and Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. His first book, Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2008. In 2009 Hill became an editor at Broadsided Press. He lives in Bemidji, MN.