The poems from Jill Hoffman's new book Kimono with Young Girl Sleeves talk about difficult subjects - aging, death, the loss of loved ones. But they do it with honesty and the audacity of youth. The fearlessness of her work makes it relevant and very much alive. -- Anna Halberstadt, Vilnius Diary
Jill Hoffman's poems have a compulsion to throw themselves into tumultuous life. Their flamboyance and pleasures cannot be divorced from the anxieties of family life or friendship. And the poems keep on returning asking for more. Her devotion to dogs—and their own perilous lives—cannot be separated from friendships, lovers and children. No one is left off the hook here. There is a courage to this experiencing of life and facing up to its contradictory needs. The poems evince themselves in the risk of life. A courage of writing exemplified in such poems as "Lame Villanelle," "Relay," and "Ellipsis." -- Richard Fein, Losing It / Dear Yiddish
Jill Hoffman's poems have an honesty that teeters on the edge of revelation and then swipes left before too much family blood is spilled, and from the flesh wounds memories emerge whose lethal points are wrapped in olive leaves. Hoffman namechecks various contemporaries with praise both robust and faint, more generous nevertheless than most of her fellow scriveners in the insular world of New York poets. This lively collection from her octogenarian period is a muscular, tender and singular contribution to an overcrowded field. -- Max Blagg, Late Start for Mardi Gras
It's very comforting to live in the world of Jill Hoffman's poems. These are full of poets out and about in the world, always talking and writing. The poems have such tender affection for efforts at honesty. Poets' thoughts, on paper and in life, mingle with one's own, providing some inkling—in the back of a mind, as one buys one's groceries—of what life might actually be like. -- Karin Roffman, The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery's Early Life
Jill Hoffman's first book of poems, Mink Coat, was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1973. Her first novel, Jilted, was published by Simon & Schuster in 1993. She founded Box Turtle Press in 1983 and has since published 44 books: 24 issues of Mudfish, starting with Mudfish 1984 and 20 issues of Mudfish Individual Poet Series. Kimono with Young Girl Sleeves is Mudfish Individual Poet Series #20. Before that, Box Turtle Press published her collection black diaries (poems) in 2000 and The Gates of Pearl (a book-length poem) in 2018. In 2023, a second novel, Stoned, was published (Mudfish Fiction Series 1). She is also a painter and has painted the covers for many of these books.
Hoffman has a BA from Bennington, a Master's degree from Columbia and a Ph.D. from Cornell. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974 to 1975. She has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Bard, The University of North Carolina, The New School, and other institutions. Presently she teaches a Mudfish Writing Workshop on Zoom from her Tribeca, New York studio.
