Tony Hoagland is the author of five volumes of poetry: Application for Release from the Dream; Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty; Sweet Ruin, winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry; Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets; and What Narcissism Means to Me. He is also the author of two collections of essays about poetry, Real Sofistakashun and Twenty Poems That Could Save America, as well the chapbook Don't Tell Anyone. His poems and critical essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, and Ploughshares . He is the winner of the 2008 Jackson Poetry Prize, awarded by Poets & Writers magazine.

Hello, Mr. Hoagland. Thank you for taking the time to speak with TWA as we celebrate National Poetry Month.

I called a local bookstore recently and asked if they had your latest collection, Application for Release from the Dream, in stock, and barely got the words out before the guy on the other end of the line exclaimed, "That is such a good book! We are currently out, but I'm going to order a dozen right now." We were two giddy poetry fiends for a second, talking about your book with the enthusiasm of teens at a rock concert.

There is delight, anger, mercy, and, as always, a great deal of humor in this collection. Tell us about it. How long did it take to write; was it a painstaking process? Did you choose the cover with the photo of the rare white humpback whale rising from the water?

First of all, thank you for the story.

I just got back from the Florida Panhandle, near Pensacola, and to me it was something like poetry. On the one hand, the reality of the Arby's and the parking lots and the tattoo parlors and the clam shacks. One hundred feet away, on the other hand, was the beach, the impossible sugar-white sand, and the turquoise, crystal-clear ocean. It was spring break and I know that, a block away, a sophomore named Nancy from Tallahassee was vomiting under a Ferris wheel, and some other kid named Todd was jumping off the balcony of his third-floor room into the hotel swimming pool, and the ambulance was already on its way, and the blue blue ocean was minding its own eternal business. That catches the coexistence of the sacred and profane, which makes the world and makes poetry too. That juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, of the precious and the appalling, is really important to my poetry. It's a description of the world, and, to me, also a description of human nature, of psychological reality.

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