Michael Hofmann Nights in the Iron Hotel Paperback Book

Michael Hofmann, a muchpraised contributor to Poetry Introduction 5, was born in Germany in 1957 but brought up in Britain. Nights in the Iron Hotel, which won the author a Cholmondeley Award in 1984, is his first fulllength volume. Hofmanns poems are marked by a classical authority, a formidable ironic intelligence, wideranging subject matter and a unique tone of voice. You move the fiftyseven muscles it takes to smile, Hofmann writes in a poem whose subject is sexual tension and immediately the reader recognises a world in which emotions are not the usual poetic counters but something truer, more complex and more painful. This quality of disenchantment is served by a deceptively laconic style of measured brio. | Michael Hofmann Nights in the Iron Hotel Paperback Book