Eric Hoffman

Circumference of the Sun Eric Hoffman

Why I felt compelled to render these ancient texts, which wade between the shallows of hope and the endless depths of outright despair, into this present form is quite simple. We live in a world of Biblical proportions--one of swift social and environmental transformations--that seems under the nearly constant threat of impending doom. The world was always so and will always be. A DREAM OF AMOS is a vision of hell on earth. A trio of 8th-7th century minor prophets' works are referenced (Amos, Nahum, and Habakkuk). Modern equivalents to those prophetic words are introduced and meditated upon. A QUIET PERSISTENCE is inspired by the untimely death of poet Sean Bonney and deals primarily with the personal--it is the only section composed in first person--and presents the reader with a vision of life as a purgatorial balance between existence and non-existence/Heaven and Hell. CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE SUN borrows liberally from the 300-200 BCE Book of Watchers section of the apocryphal text The Book of Enoch. It is an account of the Fall of the Angels and the demoralization of man, yet most of it consists of a dream vision of Enoch, the great grandfather of Noah, and his exploration of the geography of Heaven.--Eric Hoffman

Poetry.