Bachelor Holiday by William Huhn

“William Huhn, in a wonderfully supple and natural idiom, turns out to be the Ovid of our present milieu. His poems observe, and tenderly participate in, metamorphoses that signal miraculous events transpiring right before our eyes, if only our eyes were as keen and clear as his. Bachelor Holiday is a collection that makes me grateful, and almost glad, to be living in this havoc of a century.”

—Donald Revell, author of White Campion and twice Winner of the PEN Center USA Award in Poetry

“William Huhn’s Bachelor Holiday is a bittersweet, multi-dimensional recollection—of past loves, historical mysteries, moments of weather, of philosophical obsession—whose subject range and command of language dazzles. Here ‘stuff’ exists confidently near a ‘dew-pearled spring,’ while four-line poems match the strength of 7-pagers. This is a journey through an acquisitive, though unhurried, mind, one within which any reader would be lucky to spend time.”

—Rachel Abramowitz, author of The Birthday of the Dead, winner of the 2021 Marystina Santiestevan poetry prize

“The precise, evocative poems in William Huhn’s Bachelor Holiday bring us to places we’ve never been, then bring us back to where we are today. We witness the riches of Babylonia and Herculaneum, and then we are home, shutting the windows as a thunderstorm hits. Along the way, the speaker guides us with an artist’s eye for detail and a poet’s sense of language. My favorite among the many jewellike lyrics is ‘Expedition,’ about a difficult ascent, the loss of friends, and a final rebirth. These poems will lift and transport…”

—Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Safe Colors and Haywire, a No. 1 best-seller on Small Press Distribution’s fiction list

William Huhn grew up in Pennsylvania, in an old colonial house overflowing with books. He studied classical violin from age five, then took up old time fiddle. Shortly after graduating from Vassar College with a chemistry degree, he published his first poem. Uninspired by lab work, he played fiddle across Europe, to finance his poetry. The poems he wrote during this period found their way into journals and magazines and would form the backbone for Bachelor Holiday, his first full-length collection. The travels themselves led to a sequence of narrative essays found in American Literary Review, Sport Literate, Pembroke, Rosebud, etc. Eight of these were listed as a “Notable Essay” in The Best American Essays series. His biography of Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Henrietta Seiberling, his late grandmother, is forthcoming. Today, Huhn works for a testing and certification company, overseeing its East Coast laboratories. He lives just outside New York City with his wife, son, and baby girl.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 86 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-468-0

$20

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