Poem of the Week: "Hope Chest" by Daniel Tobin

The VPR Poem of the Week is Daniel Tobin’s “Hope Chest,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2002 issue (Volume III, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review. This poem also has been published in Poetry from Paradise Valley, an anthology of poems from the first decade of VPR, recently released by Pecan Grove Press.

Daniel Tobin is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Belated Heavens, as well as a critical study, Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney. He is the editor of The Book of Irish American Poetry from the 18th Century to the Present, Light in Hand: Selected Early Poems of Lola Ridge, and Poet’s Work, Poet’s Play: Essays on the Practice and the Art. He has received the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Robert Frost Fellowship, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Widely published in literary journals—including American Scholar, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Nation, New Republic, Poetry, Paris Review, Sewanee Review, and Southern Review—his work also has been anthologized in The Bread Loaf Anthology of New American Poets, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, and elsewhere. Tobin is Chair of the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers visit it.