Ernest Hilbert (Storm Swimmer) James Merrill House Fellow Reading
Bank Square Books and The James Merrill House present an author talk and reading with fellow, Ernest Hilbert.
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About the Book
In poems celebrating survival and renewal, Ernest Hilbert summons the ageless conflict between human affection and the passing of time, recognizing that all we love must eventually disappear. Tender poems of fatherhood weigh against unsettling explorations of natural dangers and intimations of bodily harm. From porn sets to seedy gun ranges and heavy metal tribute nights in crumbling theaters, Hilbert’s eye roves over the desolation and beauty of contemporary America, all the while feeling the irresistible pull of water—what Melville called “the ungraspable phantom of life.” His poems return again and again to rivers, lakes, and the sea, there to find “a universe that loves the dark,” one that “bears you up as if you had no weight.”
About the Author
Ernest Hilbert is the author of the poetry collections Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, Caligulan—selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize—and Last One Out. His fifth book, Storm Swimmer, was selected by Rowan Ricardo Phillips as the winner of the 2022 Vassar Miller Prize. He has written about books for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Times Literary Supplement. His poem “Mars Ultor” was included in Best American Poetry, and his poetry has appeared widely in such journals as Yale Review, American Poetry Review, BOMB, Harvard Review, Arion, Sewanee Review, Hudson Review, Boston Review, The New Republic, American Scholar, and the London Review. In 2023 he was awarded the Meringoff Writing Award for Poetry from the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers. He lives with his wife and son in Philadelphia, where he works as a rare book dealer. Visit him at www.ernesthilbert.com
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