National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.Paterson Award for Literary Excellence."What Hicok's getting at [in Elegy Owed] is both the necessity and the inadequacy of language, the very bluntness of which (talk about a paradox) makes it all the more essential that we engage with it as a precision instrument, a force of clarity, of (at times) awful grace."—Los Angeles Times"[A] fluid, absorbing new collection. . . . Highly recommended."—Library Journal, starred reviewWhen asked in an interview "What would Bob Hicok launch from a giant sling shot?" he answered "Bob Hicok." Elegy Owed—Hicok's eighth book—is an existential game of Twister in which the rules of mourning are broken and salvaged, and "you can never step into the same not going home again twice."From "Notes for a time capsule":The twig in. I'll put the twig in I carry in my pocketand my pocket and my eye, my left eye. A cupof the Ganges and the bacteria from shitin the Ganges and the anyway ablutions of rainbow-robed Hindus in the Ganges. The dawnline of the mountainwith contrail above like an accent in a languagetoo large for my mouth. A mirrorso whoever opens the past will see themselvesin the past and fall back from their facespeaking to them across centuries or hoursor the nearnevers . . . Bob Hicok's worked as an automotive die designer and a computer system administrator before becoming an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech. He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.