Sullen Weedy Lakes [Paperback]

William Logan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0879237309 | ISBN-13: 978-0879237301 | Publication Date: October 1, 1994 | Edition: 1st

Ranging from acerbic couplets to solemnly tolling verse, William Logan's newest book explores the soul of man in the soil of his society. In the world of Sullen Weedy Lakes, evolution is a downward spiral, and the changes of life "unhappy ripening." In poetry that is sobering and miraculous, Logan exposes man in his exile, where social order is oppression, and nature the mirror and mimic of his devastation. Logan the observer is often aloof, dryly detailing horrific tableaus, yet in the end he weaves the separate poems into a rare concern and modulated despair. Corruption, oppression, and disease, legitimized by the ghastly pastel stamp of commerce and greed, have mastered and monstered the age; but the sullen weedy lakes of history may yet be sailed by the common, triumphant moorhen. Working against the pale romance of contemporary American verse, Sullen Weedy Lakes is an accomplished collection by a poet of whose early work Richard Howard remarked, "These are the poems in Prospero's drowned book."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Tightly bound, both in form and in content, the poems in Logan's latest collection illustrate his great control of the English language. While there is some humor (for instance, in the opening poem, "Moorhen," which is literally about a hen), most of the poems reflect a deep, rich, and intensely Anglo-Saxon history. Shakespeare, Coleridge, and Darwin are only a few of the figures called up in the examination of history that these poems undertake. For all their skill and craft, however, the very classical and distancing style in which these poems are written makes them somewhat difficult to approach.
- Jessica Grim, NYPL
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

3-13 September 1752
The Air Of Cathedrals
Ambassador Of Imperfect Mood
The Ancient Economy
Anglian Music
Auden
August In The Straits
Babies
Banana Republics
The Barbarian Sack Of Rome
California From England
Capability Brown In The Tropics
Christ Church, Oxford - 26 October 1881
Coleridge In The Hurricane
Convention Of Liars
Darwin In The Ditch
Debora Sleeping
Disease And Etiquette
The Duck Pond
Elms And Antiques
The Great Wildlife Of The Church
Haddocks' Eyes
The Imitative Fallacy
The Inns And Outs Of Irony
James At Sixty
Major Graves
Memoirs Of Empire
Methods Of Empire
Moorhen
The New World
Nocturne Revolutionnaire
The North Atlantic
On The Late Murders
Political Song
Racial Prejudice In Imperial Rome
The Rivers Of England
Shakespeare And Science
To The Honourable Committee
The Underground
The Virus In Rude Weather
Westport After The Hurricane
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine; 1st edition (October 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879237309
• ISBN-13: 978-0879237301
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,605,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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