Fire Series

Poems

Kelly Hoffer

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780822992516
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Fire is both destructive and regenerative; at times vengeful, at others cleansing. The first mention of fire in Genesis comes after Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden. In Greek mythology, Prometheus steals fire from the gods for humankind. Fire becomes metaphorically layered—as knowledge, as desire, as anger. The book entertains the many strands of this fiery lineage as it undertakes a poetic investigation into grief and sex, loneliness and restlessness within intimacy, and language's ability to make, unmake, and remake things. Hoffer engages in questions of gender, anger, and nationality—how women are made subject to expectations of care and fidelity. How Americans are called into conflicts that defy sense, that defy humanist values. The voice is angry as she struggles with the limitations of her agency and further frustrated that "speaking directly" does not seem to furnish progress or power. The book, then, tries to speak otherwise—it moves sonically, associatively, obsessively.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• A field (not on fire)
• God is a kite.
• God is a kite.
• The first symptom of a sequel
• the faces of a diamond
• The first flame named only after expulsion
• Pluming
• A structured fire
• An unstructured fire
• Ars poetica (clouded)
• Fire interval
• the faces of a diamond
• chemical lace / day series
• Or am I a room with a roof taken off, still holding onto my idea of a ceiling
• The first flame wed to a sword
• Eve on fire // the hymn
• Eve on fire // the siren
• flame
• Brood parasite
• In the early dark of morning
• Constraints I give the page as it builds my virtual life
• Field holiday
• Do I take to the heather
• Do I set the heather on fire
• Disaster type
• He told me he recognized our new life and I knew
• the faces of a diamond
• The first flame a vehicle
• vers
• Sex poem
• Pygmalion iteration
• Firebreak
• An exercise in which I try to see blue in the red flame.
• Racket (i)
• Racket (ii)
• Racket (iii)
• Know where
• Foliage freeze
• The first flame rendered
• I invest in horizon futures
• the faces of a diamond
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Backcover Page