First Light: & Other Poems - Softcover

Warren Hope was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and still lives near there. After working at a variety of jobs and serving as a helicopter medic with the US Air Force in Vietnam, he attended Temple University and eventually settled into a career in publishing and public relations at the Insurance Institute of America. At the same time, his poems began to appear spasmodically in little magazines on both sides of the Atlantic and were at times gathered in pamphlets published by Robert L. Barth. His first book-length collection, Adam's Thoughts in Winter, was published by Greenwich Exchange in 2000. This new volume is meant to supplement that one. He is the biographer of Norman Cameron, the British poet and translator, and the editor, with Jonathan Barker, of Cameron's work. He teaches at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

Warren Hope's poetry is firmly grounded in reality. A lyricist of the everyday, Hope recognises and captures in words the small transformative moments of living. The poems of First Light are those of a poetic craftsman, one fully at ease with his chosen discipline. At its finest, his work straddles the vibrant vernacular of the United States and the formality of the traditional lyric. The tension between these two idioms - and Hope's reaction to it - produces a satisfying and challenging collection.