Overview

"Continued Cases is a collection of poems satirical, social, and political. A sequel to Hague's Public Hearings (Word Press, 2009) it was written partly in response to the 45th presidency of the United States. It addresses practices, policies, and personalities as well as opines on education, the arts, and the fate of the environment. One of the book's epigraphs is from the 2017 prayer card at the funeral of Wayne Barret, author of Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention. ""Our credo must be the exposure of the plunderers, the steerers, the wirepullers, the bosses, the brokers, the campaign givers and takers ... So I say: Stew, percolate, pester, track, burrow, besiege, confront, damage, level, care."" In Continued Cases, Hague does his best to offer opposition to the outlandish, the illegal, the inhumane. At the same time, as a native Appalachian from the Ohio Valley steel town declared in the l970s to have the worst air in the country, he recollects the personal damages of industrial extractive industry. Aware of the agrarian traditions of Jefferson, the democratic, populist appetites of Whitman, and the counter-cultural politics of the Sixties, Hague offers seasoned witness to our times."

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9781953252890

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Reviews

"A marvelous collection of series poems and longer poems, combines- in delightful variety- beauty and wisdom. As classic as it is modern, as medieval as it is mythic, quotidian as it is universal. From beginning to end, a great book to sit with after the busyness of the day. -Ron Houchin, Award-winning author of The Man Who Saws Us In Half I had the privilege of interviewing Richard Hague not so many years ago about poetry and teaching and this, among the many things we discussed, will always remain with me: as far back as his college years he knew that his job ""was not to become a poet that sounded the same at 60 as he had at 20 and whose subject matters remained the same at 60 as they were at 20. Given the variety of life, and given the variety of things that are interesting and things that poetry can be made from, why the hell would you want to limit yourself to one sort of specialized niche that is all yours? Poetry is vast. It's large. You follow Whitman's 'I am large, I contain multitudes.'"" And so, too, are these poems massive and multifarious in how and what they approach, but seen always through Dick Hague's exacting eye for the specific and strange. His whole universe of poetry is ""a kind of resonance and harmony"" where ""[e]ven language folds into itself / in odd places"" and we, his readers, are grateful that it is so. -Pauletta Hansel, Poet Laureate of Cincinnati, author of Tangle Hague's poems summon affecting presences from soul and memory, from history and dream, from science and story. They both consider and inhabit nature, rendering it in stirring images, in lush and musical language, and in a voice that is passionate and sure. -A.E.Stringer, author of Late Breaking & Asbestos Brocade."

"""Richard Hague's fearless new collection, CONTINUED CASES, is a testimony to due diligence, no holds barred. Hague is a scholar, an archivist, a revealer of falsehoods, an instigator if you will, a soothsayer poet who is not afraid to use his gift for words as activism: '2,000 new chemicals / every year, vast spills; / of oil, billions of / fracking gallons poisoned and / lost to the water cycle.' Plain speak from a man who comes from 'noisy town, railroads, steel mills--cacophonies and cinders.' In this time of chaos, troglodytes, and naysayers, Hague is a man determined to use his passions to bring back some sense of duty, compassion, and honor to our fractured yet precious and beautiful world."" --Kari Gunter-Seymour, Ohio Poet Laureate, author of Alone in the House of My Heart ""In his latest collection, CONTINUED CASES, Dick Hague is unflinching in his acute and poignant poetic commentary on Americans and American society, thus providing an apt sequel to Public Hearings (Word Press, 2009). Drawing from vast lived experiences, as well as shrewd societal observations and lamentations, Hague offers his own State of the Union report in which he bemoans human stupidity and apathy, indicts inanity, and issues a call to immediate action. Indeed, as readers of Hague's work, we are called out. We are called out to pay attention to and heal our struggling planet, to counter nefarious 'alternative facts, ' to live lives centered on justice and peace. Without hyperbole, Hague's poetry proclaims, whether overtly or subtly, that future generations depend on us to do so. Now."" --Theresa Burris, Assistant VP of Community Engagement and Economic Development, Emory & Henry College"

Author Information

Richard Hague, a native of Steubenville, Ohio in the Appalachian Ohio River Valley, taught at Purcell Marian High School in Cincinnati for 45 years. While there he engaged in other enterprises and adventures, including adjuncting at Edgecliff College and at Xavier University, his alma mater, commercial urban gardening, hosting writers workshops, and teaching for a few summers at the Institute for Professional Development and Graduate School of Education at Northeastern University in Boston. His high school career ended when he refused to sign an anti-gay and anti-worker's rights Archdiocese of Cincinnati contract in May 2014. Not long after, he was named Writer-in- Residence at Thomas More University in northern Kentucky, where he continued as Artist-in-Residence until 2022. He now teaches and writes with The Originary Arts Initiative. He is author, co-editor, or editor of 20 collections, most recently RIPARIAN: POETRY, SHORT PROSE AND PHOTOGRAPHY INSPIRED BY THE OHIO RIVER (Dos Madres Press, 2019), Earnest Occupations: Teaching, Writing, Gardening & Other Local Work (Bottom Dog Press, 2018), STUDIED DAYS: POEMS EARLY & LATE IN APPALACHIA (Dos Madres Press, 2017), WHERE DRUNK MEN GO: A LONG POEM (Dos Madres Press, 2015) and DURING THE RECENT EXTINCTIONS: NEW & SELECTED POEMS 1984-2012 (Dos Madres Press, 2012), for which he was given the Weatherford Award in Poetry Writing Award. He continues to live in Cincinnati.

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