SOURCE: "A Student of Desire," in The Nation, New York, Vol. CCXXXXIX, No. 20, December 11, 1989, pp. 722-23.

In the following review, Bogen lauds Hass for his ability to evoke and explore the complexity of desire in Human Wishes.

What's immediately striking in Robert Hass's work is the sheer abundance of pleasures. Who else among our poets would bring together the delights of landscape, climate and food in a salad "with chunks of cooked chicken in a creamy basil mayonnaise a shade lighter than the Coast Range in August" ("Vintage") or include a recipe for onion soup—complete with shredded Samsoe and advice on how to eat it with friends—as a "Song to Survive the Summer"? In his incisive collection of essays, Twentieth Century Pleasures, Hass set our engagement with poetry squarely in the context of other forms of satisfaction—in domestic life, in nature, in the senses. The...