ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Rounding the Human Corners (2008), a volume which represents Hogan's poetry of the 2000s. It brings a renewed fascination with the miracle of life, embodiment, the life of the senses, and an appreciation of the smallest, most fragile life forms. Attunement to the animal body divine and celebration of participatory awareness characterize the bulk of this poetry collection. Watching other lives, the poet is increasingly conscious of being watched in return, of being caught in the mutuality of perceptual awareness, realizing that she has been forever changed by seeing herself measured by another, nonhuman intelligence. Reality constantly shapeshifts. By harmonizing herself with this ever changing reality, she shapeshifts herself, becoming the animal she loves, becoming animal—any and every animal. But by becoming animal she also becomes more fully human, re-united with the land and its rich network of relationality.
