Customer Reviews

Vain Empires (Poets, Penguin)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Vain Empires is not quite as good as Logan's book Night Battle; nevertheless it is still excellent--stunning heightened language in the best modernist style; reading Logan is like reading a version of Geoffrey Hill that makes more immediate sense (not, of course, to denigrate the venerable Hill). Logan's accessibility combined with his craftmanship with rhythm--his song-poems are especially stunning--is gorgeous, and makes for very readable poems. Combined with his Keats-like disassociation of sensibility, Logan's depressed suburban vision makes for a very unique book of poems.

Comparisons by other reviewers to so-called 'academy verse' are completely wrong; they apparently have never been near an MFA program. I wish to God MFA programs produced poems with language as careful as this.

Also, the particular example below ('shopping cart') is not only out-of-context, but carefully selected from the worst poem in the book. I can't imagine what would motivate this kind of selective reviewing except for the fact that Logan, as a critic, tends to skewer other authors in print. This makes for a lot of personal animosity on the part of other writers, and--although its not really a fair argument to make--may be behind the strange responses below.

The oranges swell within the Age of Reason.
Across the rusted screen, pad by silk pad,
the gecko presses claim upon the eye,

black heart soaking through its papery skin...

Vain Empires is not quite as good as Logan's book Night Battle; nevertheless it is still excellent--stunning heightened language in the best modernist style; reading Logan is like reading a version of Geoffrey Hill that makes more immediate sense (not, of course, to denigrate the venerable Hill). Logan's accessibility combined with his craftmanship with rhythm--his song-poems are especially stunning--is gorgeous, and makes for very readable poems. Combined with his Keats-like disassociation of sensibility, Logan's depressed suburban vision makes for a very unique book of poems.

Comparisons by other reviewers to so-called 'academy verse' are completely wrong; they apparently have never been near an MFA program. I wish to God MFA programs produced poems with language as careful as this.

Also, the particular example below ('shopping cart') is not only out-of-context, but carefully selected from the worst poem in the book. I can't imagine what would motivate this kind of selective reviewing except for the fact that Logan, as a critic, tends to skewer other authors in print. This makes for a lot of personal animosity on the part of other writers, and--although its not really a fair argument to make--may be behind the strange responses below.

The oranges swell within the Age of Reason.
Across the rusted screen, pad by silk pad,
the gecko presses claim upon the eye,

black heart soaking through its papery skin...

After years of agonizing near misses, the common man's poet, William Logan, finally discharges the poetic equivalent of "Springtime for Hitler." Logan's verse has always been remarkable for the simple rhymes, predictable structures, sloppy word choice and desperate, cloying neediness. This time, somehow, Logan turns all of those hideous tendencies into a hilariously comic satire on academic verse with a collection of mulch-pile ditties so lifelessly bombastic that it screams "I was born in an MFA workshop."

I laughed so hard as I read this book that I almost wet my pants. Logan has finally done something worthwhile with his life. Can the Broadway musical of "Vain Empires" be far behind?

These two need to give me a break. They sound like free verse cry babies who couldn't get a poem published if they paid for it. This book is probably not the best example of Logan's abilities, but it's better than most of what passes for poetry today by the same MFA graduates that are referenced in the first review. OK, I adimit there are generally not shopping carts at shopping malls and I've never seen or thought about seeing malls or carts discussing the art of death. You can always find one stupid example in every book of poetry. But in "Nocturne Galant" there's the following stanza: "I promised her that I'd be faithful/ with all my faithless heart/ for a month or until next Tuesday/ Love lies, and so does art." Which I think makes up for cart/mall analogy. Believe me I'm no expert, but I know decent poetry when I read it. And as for Logan being the poet of the "common man"! Where is the reviewer getting that? Most poetry today is so below even common that Logan seems like a prodigy. So change your diaper curl up with your dog-earred copy of "Howl"

"Learning how to die / is finally just an art, / says the shopping mall / to the shopping cart."

Gimme a break! This stanza is just one example how Logan swerves from pretentious silliness to empty formalism and back. His verse is among the most awful I've ever read outside vanity press publications, if not the worst contemporary American poetry in print -- if one can call his doggerel poetry.