SEEKING THE HOOK, New & Selected Poems, published in 1997, contains poems from Lou Lipsitz two previous books, COLD WATER and REFLECTIONS ON SAMSON as well as eight-five pages of new work. The new poems are especially focused on exploring aspects of the male emotional experience - including the struggle to acknowledge depth of feeling, coming to terms with loss, being able to carry the weight of grief and to find use for the fires of rage. Some poems ask how to deal with the wounds one has received and also the wounds one has inflicted, knowingly or not. As Robert Bly described the poet's position in these new poems: "He's in the boat along with crazy Hungarian aunts and Brooklyn grandfathers, but he's also in the water more and more, a large fish looking for the hook of truth." The clear exploratory honesty of the poems, led George Hitchcock to say"the best of them are the equal of anything now being written in America."