“I Have Warned You To Beware”: Six Questions for Paul Hoover
Paul Hoover was born in 1946, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He was a poet in residence at Columbia College Chicago for many years before accepting an offer to go work as a teacher at San Francisco State University in the year 2003. He is known for being an editor of both the magazine New American Writing and Postmodern American Poetry. He wrote the script in 1994 for the independent film of Viridian, which was screened at both The Film Center of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Hamburg Film Festival. His poetry has been featured in many literary magazines, for example; American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, Hambone, and many more. Overall Hoover has published a novel, 15 poetry collections, and a book of literary essays.
The first poem I read of Hoover’s was “God’s Promises” which was featured in Best American Poetry. It was actually the first poem I read in the entire book, because the name caught my attention. I have never really read any poems surrounding religion and I wanted to see his perspective. It was very different from what I had expected, the poem has a very modern take on religion as I see it. And it was less focused on religion, more of just using it as a backbone for good poetry. The poem describes a situation where God is angry at humans and jealous we are not praising him more so he lashes out on humanity. This story that is told was very alluring because I have never heard anyone describe God in a jealous or hateful manner. The collection of poems that I read of Hoover’s were all based on the Old Testament, I wanted to see his other ideas on religion and read these stories he told. His younger life really reflects in his work, seeing as his dad was a priest and religion was something he did not really get to choose. His use of religious ideas in his poems are what make it so complex.
Is your relationship with God and religion solely based on your writing, or do you share a deeper personal connection?
I was baptized at the age of eight into the Church of the Brethren, a small Protestant denomination similar to the Mennonites and Amish. My father was a pastor of the church, and we moved every 3-5 years while I was growing up. I remember seeing a mover carry an entire refrigerator on his back, using a strap. Our church is pacifist in its belief, so I served as a “conscientious objector” in a Chicago hospital during the Vietnam War, the basis of my novel, Saigon, Illinois (Vintage Contemporaries, 1988), a chapter of which appeared in The New Yorker. I have not attended a Church of the Brethren service since the early 1980s, when my wife Maxine, my daughter Koren, and I visited my parents in Pennsylvania in the 1980s. But I believe in the philosophy of peace, kind acts, and social service practiced by the Brethren.
I’ve noticed in “God’s Promises” there is occasional rhyming of words at the end of some lines, is this purposeful? If so, is there a reason behind it?
I see that “place” and “cake” rhyme, as well as the identical rhyme of “knife-edge” and “edge,” toward the end of the work, also “cornbread” and “undead” toward the beginning. I enjoy word play, but it happened instinctually, rather than by plan, in this case. Rhyme aids the drama of the theme that God is angry with us, as often happens in the Old Testament), thus “wrecked rooms,” a pun on “rec rooms.”
When I read your use of the word “turnstile” in “God’s Promises,” I saw it as suggesting a gateway to Heaven. What is your perspective of Heaven and does that ever impact your poetry?
The line, “your beds with be entered by turnstile,” suggests marital uneasiness. Who else is coming to your bed, as if through a mercantile turnstile? Here is a house where the “owls and bats flit in.” Why? Because God has lost faith in us, and, like an angry parent, sends punishment and vacancy.
The concept of Heaven is part of the Christian promise. It’s magical thinking, because the only beauty and serenity we have is here on Earth. We must learn to be at peace and feel reverence for the miracle that we live on a planet spinning through space.
Towards the end of “God’s Promises,” the line “I have warned you to beware” jumped out at me. Do you believe people should fear God and his return? Is it something humans are ready for?
Many Christians believe that God is always present, so there is no need for a return. But in the Old Testament, God is jealous that we might worship something other than Him. I use the word “Him” with reservations, because God, if “He” exists, is a non-gendered force of the world, like fate. The God of the Old Testament was the invention of desert prophets to explain the perplexing miracle of existence. The poet, Wallace Stevens, called poetry “the Supreme Fiction.” But the first fiction for every culture is its creation myth.
Throughout “God’s Promises” you talk about nature combining with our lives. How does this idea of the connection between humans and nature connect to religion? Is our combining the way you think things should be?
The poem portrays a God who threatens all kinds of disorder, because humankind has not prepared to serve him: “Woe is the Lord of Heaven / who has no mansion on earth.” Upset that he is not sufficiently loved, he threatens to “force the mosquitoes indoors,” among other punishments. God is seen as petulant and jealous, to a comical degree. This aligns with the ancient Greek gods, for instance Zeus coming down as a swan to ravish Leda.
The final two lines of the poem “God’s Promises” read “you await a handsome savior, / but the plain man draws near … ” I see these lines as meaning people have high expectations of God, but fail to understand that he is also humble. How do you view God? Do you imagine him looking like a normal human being or something much more excellent?
There’s a famous painting of Jesus as handsome, long-haired Anglo. Using the logic of the Trinity, some people assume that God has human features. The historical Jesus not Anglo, and most likely he was swarthy. The poem suggests that Jesus, like all of us, was not necessarily glamorous. He may be the person seated beside you on the subway.
Along with the Mexican poet María Baranda, I translated the complete poems of San Juan de la Cruz, a 14th century mystical Carmelite. He got in a lot of trouble with other clerics, because his poetry portrayed the relations of Esposo (Husband), Hijo (Son), and Esposa (Wife), in sensual as well as spiritual terms. According to Colin Thompson, San Juan was not the first to do so: “The philosopher Origen (184-254 CE) was the first writer to interpret the union symbolized in the Song of Songs between Bride and Bridegroom as between the Word of God (the Logos) and the individual soul.”