Ray Hinman (June 20, 1956-Jan 24, 2014)




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Ray Hinman Returns the strength of History and culture to language. Unashamed of thought,uninhibited by the current fashion of poetic anti-intellectualism,Hinman speaks from a foundation of tradition freshens his structures with the touch and nature. Definitely modern, he unites civilization across time, refuses to surrender to the triviality of high technology,though hints that our era stands out in defiance of human greatness. His rhythms flow with the love of language's music, like the Whitman whose ghost tours the city, he finds in the urban tableau the clues to what we search for in clustering into cities.


Ray Hinman's poems are vibrant with the tension between light and darkness, life and death, and they are a cycle of rebirth in which corpses can blossom again. It is a world built through conversations with the dead, with the voices of the literary past, allusions to the things that have come before and constructed with a clear, conscious sense that poetry is a Craft. These poems understand the value of things like aesthetics, culture and meaning. Ray Hinman understands the poet as the modern descendant of the Shaman, treading the boundary between what is forbidden and what is allowed to guide us beyond the things that distract us and drown the spirit to the transcendent and the sublime.

Mary R: "I read a number of Ray Hinman's poems pre-publication and was captivated by them. He sees the world with a true poet's eyes. He made me see places I've never been, right down to the small details. While the poems are masterfully written, their edgy realism keeps them from coming across as either formal or fanciful."


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