Best Mopar Poet

W. Joe Hoppe

What do you get when you mix a card-carrying Mopar Muscle Cars of Austin member with a poet? A red-bearded wordsmith growling with steel and smoke. The Austin Community College professor originally came from Michigan, but he quickly became an essential part of Austin as a Blue Plate Poets member and a Michener fellow. He still hosts a regular reading series at Malvern Books. And his poems still have their urgency, seeking beauty and truth in the ordinary: “stainless steel hex nuts/falling like raindrops/to a polished concrete floor.”

sites.austincc.edu/crw/joe-hoppe