This collection of poems employs different forms, such as sonnets and free verse in both English and the original Spanish. It includes the poems, John Lennon 1940-1980, Sigmund Freud Under Hypnosis and Fixed Stars in a White Sky.

Stolen reflections trapped in those viscid waters of memory that but falters - dark, yet swirling bright enough to get you through the night.

“Immediate, sensual, unrelentingly intense.” —NPR A breathtaking volume about the violence of desire and the peace of love from celebrated poet Li-Young Lee, The Undressing is a tonic for spiritual anemia; it attempts to uncover things hidden since the dawn of the world. Short of achieving that end, these mysterious, unassuming poems investigate the human violence and dispossession increasingly prevalent around the world, and the horrors the poet grew up with as a child of refugees. Lee draws from disparate sources including the Old Testament, the Dao De Jing, and the music of the Wu-Tang Clan. While the ostensive subjects of these layered, impassioned poems are wide-ranging, their driving engine is a burning need to understand our collective human mission.

The more than two dozen personal essays in this new collection by one of Texas's master storytellers range from travel pieces about Havana and London to stories about small-town exotics that are funny, nervy, outlandish, and all characterized by James Hoggard's sly wit and his noted openness to people he meets along the way. Fast-paced, yet at the same time reflective, Hoggard guides his readers into some of the wonderfully strange turns of the world, including a Saturday morning gathering of khaki-dressed men who have hunkered down at a Dairy Queen to get away from their women who want them to spend the day doing chores. At the same time they see Hoggard as a bicycle-riding exotic who finds it normal to go out and bike 60-odd miles before lunch. Now and then the encounters are hair-raising, sometimes scary, but Hoggard always provides the kind of interior monologues that draw upon both deep reading and deep observation.

Set in north Texas, and the Southwest in general, this coming-of-age novel pits a protagonist with a traditional, rural background, against the "sophistication" of Dallas in the late 1960s. The title character, Trotter, falls for a woman about to be married, and must deal with that rejection. He takes to the road to discover himself, and to discover the mysteries of sex -- in some very finely crafted literary love scenes. The precision of Hoggard's writing extends beyond the bedroom to the high plains of Texas and the mountains of New Mexico, with exquisite, poetic landscape descriptions. The novel takes on a mythic tone, making it comparable to the very best American coming-of-age novels.