Brilliant in its treatment of childhood, brotherhood, and war, James Hoch’s Radio Static is the selection from the 2020–21 chapbook open-reading period. It can be pre-ordered here for a December 21 publication. And join us on February 1 for James’ reading from the chapbook. Register here.

Praise for Radio Static

James Hoch is a visionary, able to find meaning in everything around him—dreams intersect with fields of poppies, a brother embodies a misguided war. His language is both precise and reckless—each word like a thread he’s been gathering his entire life, which he somehow weaves into broad fabrics of sound, into delicate tapestries that somehow stand before us, breathing. These poems are alive.

—Nick Flynn, author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire

“Sometimes standing beside him, / I hear the wind whistling / through my brother,” James Hoch writes, in this spare, beautiful sequence about America’s newest generation of forgotten soldiers. These are heartbreaking poems that bear witness to both the devastation of war and the quiet ravages of coming home.

—Patrick Phillips, author of Elegy for a Broken Machine

“I love the only way I can,” writes James Hoch, and that love is woven throughout this excellent treatise on compassion and masculinity. Hoch knows a great deal about the complexities and solace of brotherhood, and in these poems we experience an endangered tenderness—the recognition that another can be both yourself and not yourself at the same time. This willingness to grapple with differences and come away with a connection merits your attention. Pick up the walkie-talkie and you will hear “each calling the other: / You there? You there?”

—Elizabeth Scanlon, editor, The American Poetry Review