<p>A collection of 35 poems set mainly in Mexico, in a town where a foreigner can never be quite sure just what's going on. There are omens, begonias and a woman with an artificial larynx in this world seen sharply and generously.</p>

Player Piano: Poems

Literature & Fiction

Hilberry, Conrad

Poetry

Louisiana State Univ Pr

Luke Karamazov (Great Lakes Books)

Was it because they were subconsciously trying to kill the drunken, violent man that was their father that brothers Luke Karamazov and Tommy Searl from Kalamazoo became serial murderers?Addressing this and other questions, author Conrad Hilberry presents an unusually vivid and detailed portrait of two contrasting psychological types in this account. In 1964, Luke confessed to a five-week murder spree in which he killed five men. Tommy was convicted of the rape and murder of four women in 1972.Hilberry investigates the relationship between the brothers, as well as their feelings about their parents, about the prison staff, and about the woman who has been married to each of them. With the drama of fiction, the resulting story is bizarre, somewhat grisly, but always psychologically revealing.

Luke Karamazov (Great Lakes books)

Wayne State University Press

After-Music is a varied and rich collection of meditations on both the personal and universal. Among the many intriguing places, people, and events that Hilberry brings to life in these poems are watching manatees in a Florida canal, a reluctant priest blessing the animals in Mexico, a rushed and sullen checkout girl in the supermarket, and Day of the Dead skeletons that form a mariachi band. Some poems are formal-in sonnets, quatrains, and tetrameter couples-but most are free verse, all of them accessible and enjoyable reading.This collection is divided into five sections, organized by theme. The first and last sections are the most personal and contemplative, from the soul at season's end in "Open" to the moon about to speak in "Silence." In revealing and inviting confessions, the second section lets readers listen in on the thoughts of objects, including an oboe, a cherry pie, a moustache, a mousetrap, and a waning moon. The third section looks at horseshoe crabs, dust mites, memories stored in the hippocampus, creatures steering by pheromones through the sexual dark. The fourth section offers twelve Christmas poems, containing varied voices and a fresh look at that occasion-something few poems have attempted since Eliot's "Journey of the Magi."Hilberry's poetry bridges the gap between the ethereal realm of the spirit and the stark realism of the material world. Poetry lovers and teachers and students of contemporary verse will enjoy this significant volume.

After-Music (Made in Michigan Writer Series)

History & Criticism

The poems in Until the Full Moon Has Its Say were inspired by the loss of poet Conrad Hilberry's wife of fifty-six years, Marion. While the poems in this volume delve into the initial emptiness and hopelessness of grieving, the poet's connections to the natural world, music, and other people ultimately bring him back into the present while still acknowledging and honoring the past. The work of a skilled poet with a lifetime of experience, this collection displays Hilberry's mastery of form. The book's three sections include a sonnet, five villanelles, and a variety of stanza structures, all written in his signature tone, which is contemplative, tender, and moving.The elegant poems of Until the Full Moon Has Its Say arise from the consideration of ordinary, even humble, subjects-a bowl on a table, a blackout, mosquitoes, garlic mustard, algae on the local pond. Hilberry's relaxed voice is wise and measured even in the depths of grief, as he muses, "How can I draw dead branches / in a poem?" Part of the answer to that question lies in the use of form, which gives shape to experience. In his formal virtuosity, Hilberry even writes a villanelle-a notoriously difficult poetic form-about writing a villanelle.Written by the poet in his eighties, Until the Full Moon Has Its Say is a powerful reflection on mortality and on the art that has been his lifelong practice. All readers of poetry will treasure this powerful volume.

Until the Full Moon Has Its Say (Made in Michigan Writer Series)

Luke Karamazov is the true story of two brothers who were convicted of serial murders. In 1964, Luke Karamozov (née Ralph Searl) confessed to killing five men over a three-month period; following in his grisly footsteps was his younger brother, Tommy Searl, who was sentenced for the rape and murder of four young women in or around the brothers' hometown of Kalamazoo. The events described in the book have the drama of fiction, but are very real events. Conrad Hilberry based his account on interviews with the two men, their friends, the woman whom they both married, and prison officials. Choosing to focus more on the texture of the men's lives than on the crimes themselves, Hilberry explores the movement of their thoughts and the ways in which they have each dealt with their brutal childhoods and their lives in prison.Luke Karamazov is an unusually vivid and detailed study of two contrasting psychological types. Drawing on Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, Hilberry presents Karamazov and his brother as extreme instances of behavior and states of mind that, surprisingly, are not uncommon. The result is a story that is at once bizarre and psychologically interesting.

Reference

The Moon Seen As a Slice of Pineapple (Contemporary Poetry Series)

Univ of Georgia Pr

<p>1984 UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS SOFTCOVER</p>

The Moon Seen as a Slice of Pineapple

University of Georgia Press

Sorting the Smoke: New & Selected Poems (Iowa Poetry Prize)

Univ of Iowa Pr

Sorting the Smoke: New and Selected Poems

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hilberry, Conrad. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hilberry, Conrad

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hilberry, Conrad. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Player Piano: Poems

Player Piano: Poems

Luke Karamazov (Great Lakes books)

After-Music (Made in Michigan Writer Series)

Until the Full Moon Has Its Say (Made in Michigan Writer Series)

Luke Karamazov (Great Lakes Books)

The Moon Seen As a Slice of Pineapple (Contemporary Poetry Series)

The Moon Seen as a Slice of Pineapple

Sorting the Smoke: New & Selected Poems (Iowa Poetry Prize)

Sorting the Smoke: New and Selected Poems