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. 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."