Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag: With Portrait and Autograph of the Author
The poetry of Mr. Hoag is distinguished by a Doric purity and simplicity which, together with the re?ective tranquility and occasional domestic touches, affiliate it conclusively with the earlier American school. It is fresh, Colonial, and free from self-conscious ornamentation. It has escaped not only the abyss of modernism, but the hothouse of Victorian preciosity and ai fectation as well; keeping the ancient verbal austerity as Bryant kept it, and holding also not a little of that eighteenth-centuryease and swing which, as in Dr. Holmes' best work, is a genuine survival from our local tradition of Byles, Sewell, Freneau, Trum bull, Dwight and Barlow, rather than a pedantic revival of Queen Anne and Georgian piquancy after the manner of the late Austin Dobson. Flexibility, however, is a dominant fea ture; and leads the poet to adapt his measure to his mood, so that we are occasionally surprised by such variations from the general style as we see in verses like The Celtic's Dream of his Erin Home. Subtler variations are those which we note between essentially stately pieces, such as the Nature odes and the pensive reminiscences; and the playful pieces, such as the juveniles and the jovial reminiscences. When in the lighter vein, Mr. Hoag manages with unusual success to avoid the in sipid, the puerile, and the banal; and achieves a kind of origin ality resulting from the union of colloquial simplicity with cor rect diction and images drawn directly from experience. This image-drawing occasionally attains a felicity amounting to sheer genius, for Scriba seems to know by instinct just what sort of unhackneyed allusion will best call up in a few words the vivid pictures his theme demands.
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