New! Trying Not to be a Nature Poet, by W. Joe Hoppe
A new chapbooks of 13 new poems by W. Joe Hoppe, reflecting on his move from Austin Texas to the woods of Michigan.
32 pages, 5"8", Hand-printed cover
Introduction by Rich Dana, Obsolete Press
In 2011, W. Joe Hoppe first submitted poems to OBSOLETE! Magazine, my short-lived arts-and-anarchy newsprint tabloid. I immediately knew that those poems were special, and most likely, TOO GOOD for a rag like mine. Unlike most of the work I published, Joe’s poems were not frantic, bombastic, or vulgar. They were meticulously crafted. They were literary.
But I liked them anyway.
Joe was an Austin Community College creative writing teacher and gearhead, his life and poems firmly rooted in working-class life. Refined by extensive study of beat poetry and Buddhism, he submitted beautifully understated meditations on sheet metal and garbage trucks. Obsolete Press emerged from the rubble of the magazine, and Joe’s collection of poems, Diamond Plate, was OP’s first book.
Despite geographical distance, chaos and tragedies both global and personal, Joe and I have grown to be friends in the years since Diamond Plate. We put out another book together, Hotrod Golgotha, which marked the advent of the Obsolete Press semi-handmade “non-precious” design aesthetic, inspired by Joe’s craftsmanship and yin-yang of hard and soft.
A few years ago, Joe and his wife, artist Polly Monear, moved from Austin back to his home turf in rural Michigan, and with the change in surroundings came an inevitable change in the subject matter of Joe’s poems. Trying Hard Not to be a Nature Poet is not an idyll nor is it a repudiation of “nature poems.” Joe now describes the satisfaction of berry-picking with the same intent he once reserved for laying down a perfect weld.
The yin and yang of the poems now balance more subtle elements; summer and winter, the melancholy and the beatitude of rural life. As always, Joe’s poems stand as a reminder of the beauty in the “non-precious.”
A challenge faced.
A job well-done.
Rich Dana
4/23/25
