In A Poetics of Hiroshima, Heyen has broken through to face full square what has been working its way to the surface through several of his highly praised earlier books: the interfusions, in art and in our desire for art, of beauty and atrocity. Joyce Carol Oates calls Heyen "a remarkable poet in whom the 'visionary' and the unblinkingly 'historical' are dramatically meshed."
Bio
William Heyen
William Helmuth Heyen is an American poet, editor, and literary critic. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Suffolk County. He received a BA from the State University of New York at Brockport; he earned a doctorate in English from Ohio University in 1967
Cenotaph in Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima, Japan; Atomic Bomb Dome is visible through the arch.Bob GlazeArtstreetCity (pop., 2002 est.: 1,113,786), southwestern Honshu, Japan. Founded as a castle town in the 16th century, it was from 1868 a military centre. In 1945 it became the first city ever to be struck by an atomic bomb, dropped by the U.S. in the last days of World War II. Rebuilding began in 1950, and Hiroshima is now the largest industrial city in the region. It has become a spiritual centre of the peace movement to ban nuclear weapons; Peace Memorial Park is dedicated to those killed by the bomb, and Atomic Bomb Dome is the ruin of the only building to survive the blast.