Paul Hoover was born in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1946. He currently holds a position as a professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.
Together with Maxine Chernoff, he edited and translated Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin. In another collaboration, together with Nguyen Do, Hoover edited and translated the anthology Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry (Milkweed Editions, 2008).
Simple things like bread,
you can't even think about them.
The lesson of skin touching skin,
...
I shall never reach Danville, Ohio,
Danville distant and lonely.
Black car, small moon,
in the back seat beer.
...
"All these things the creator told me in Alabama."
—Sun Ra
Mariposa, what a clean word is that!
...
Don't kill yourself, Paul.
The world is angry for only a moment
and then it loves you again.
Even its perfect indifference
is love and no love in equal doses.
...
"I take away my hand, which writes and speaks much."
—Jaime Sabines
I take away my mouth,
...