Where Drunk Men Go

Poetry. There are no popular pontifications here. The word alcoholism is never mentioned, and there are no 12 steps to be heard of - although there is an entire poem listing the drunks' five rules of the universe. The relationship with hard liquor is not surrendered up as a disease, but more of a divinely dangerous and damning madness. Hague often calls upon the gods in a pagan sense, cursing them and praising in turn. One poem opens with the line, After all, it was the gods that gave us drink. Not that Hague avoids the Christian vision of the drunkard's dilemma. The regrets of sin and hell have their place in the inebriated conscience and, at one point, the poet imagines driving in a dilapidated sedan to the gates of hell, where all those he's wronged stand waiting. But Hague's understanding of what drives anyone to drink is more honest and more true than religion or popular treatments are willing to own. One of the early poems in the sequence starts, 'Used to be Wildness was my buddy.' And that's really what it is--the need for wildness in our lives, that drives us to any number of things. The experience of misrule, the bending of what seems too straight or difficult or dull. It's a bare-bones statement, and Hague hits it head on.--Nicholas Korn, City Beat