The God of This World to His Prophet: Poems (New Criterion Series) [Hardcover]

Bill Coyle (Author)

Book Description

Series: New Criterion Series | Publication Date: September 22, 2006

The sixth winner of the annual New Criterion Poetry Prize is Bill Coyle's The God of This World to His Prophet. Mr. Coyle's first collection of poems spans the divide between the minutely considered trappings of an often hard-bitten and desolate world and the larger, more elusive questions of belief. Shifting easily through registers of sober reflection, gentle satire, and even outright humor, his poems encompass landscape and dramatic situation with equal skill. Decoding the import in a stand of leafless trees or recounting the melancholy ruminations of a solitary figure in winter, Mr. Coyle finds "imaginings / projected on a darkened world of things." Also included are a number of poems translated from the Swedish that dovetail seamlessly with the author's own sensibility and concerns. His virtuosic mastery of prosodic forms, far from occluding his deeply felt subjects, reveals them to us with great force and immediacy. As Mr. Coyle puts it with characteristic precision and grace, "Artifice, at its heart, is the human touch describing / lucidly what the world, stripped to its essence, is."

Editorial Reviews

Review

Bill Coyle is a welcome new voice in a crowded choir....A winning combination and collection. (Brad Leithauserd Author Of Darlington's, Fall: A Novel In Verse )

Reading 'Aubade,' the tiny poem [concluding] Coyle's…collection is like witnessing a hole-in-one. It's a single, flawless stroke. (Eric McHenry New York Times Book Review )

Coyle is absolutely on top of his game [and] easily one of the best poets of his generation. (David Mason Hudson Review )

[Coyle] writes with a clear flow of lively thought, and at the same time plays the whole instrument of poetry. (Richard Wilbur )

Throughout his poetic cosmology, Coyle's work is striking for its light touch and thoughtful content [and] for its unpretentious command of traditional forms. (The Antioch Review )

Vision by turns compassionate and comedic...striking for its light touch and thoughtful content...steadily measured and, often, meticulously rhymed. (Ned Balbo Antioch Review )

About the Author

Bill Coyle's poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including the Hudson Review, The New Criterion, the New Republic, and Poetry. He is a translator from the Swedish, and his versions of the poet Håkan Sandell have appeared in PN Review and Ars Interpres and are forthcoming in the anthology The Other Side of Landscape. Mr. Coyle teaches in the English Department at Salem State College in Salem, Massachusetts. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee; First Edition edition (September 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566637104
• ISBN-13: 978-1566637107
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,533,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous, February 15, 2011

By 

Simon G. Barrett (london, england) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The God of This World to His Prophet: Poems (New Criterion Series) (Hardcover)

Wot, no review? For Pete's sake won't some native American recognise this little gem? It's poetry 'in form' (as I believe you call it); traditional poetry at its best. Try the sequence of 7-liners Episodes on p59-60.