Some of you may know that I operate a small literary press — Hollyridge Press — that publishes poetry chapbooks and literary fiction. Tony Hoagland was a great friend to the press, letting us publish 3 chapbooks and then, as he knew his death was near, gave us the rights to a fourth one which will arrive sometime in the near future. He was a poet of great humor and verve who also considered the social and cultural dimension in his work.
Tony died of pancreatic cancer. Though it had apparently been diagnosed early, after over 2 years of treatments including surgery and chemo, by end of this summer, the cancer was no longer responding to treatment. In his emails, he recognized that he was in the end game and there was not much time left. He maintained a great equanimity in his correspondence. He didn’t rail about contracting the disease though he certainly would have been justified. I think he was in some ways curious about what it means to know that there is a definitive end point, one that will come much sooner than for most of us. How then do you lead your life? He wrote a prose piece about treatment that was quite moving.
On a more personal note, I was one of his students in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College. Tony was in fact one of the reasons I went to the program in the first place. He encouraged me to look for what is naturally funny in my life, even if that humor came from a darker, more painful place. He encouraged me to look outward into the world with my work.
If you’re not familiar with Tony’s work, let me direct you to this post the press has put up celebrating his poetry and life.