Trouble Lights [Paperback]

William Olsen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2002

A visionary poet writes elegies for the natural world.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The imagistic richness of Olsen's third collection (after Vision of a Storm Cloud) stands in contrast to its themes: the transitory nature of existence, the circumscribed potential of human thought, and endeavor within a world eroded by inevitability ("this conquered/ vision we were given"). Olsen's poems are interrogative, probing concepts of past, present, and future with fusillades of self-perpetuating, sometimes self-negating, questions. On seeing a landscape's reflection in a lake he asks, "who needs two earths,/ who on earth needs all of this earth." Reminders of physical corruption and mortality are everywhere, as in "asphalt's intestinal shine," in a globe "cancerous/ with populated dots." At his best, Olsen can distill volumes of philosophy in a line or two "the past is what survives the past" or capture the poignancy of aging in a phrase "the narrowing years, and the widening minutes" but too often his somber, existential meditations ramble leadenly, sapping the inventive energy with which they begin. Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Olsen is a landscape poet, conjuring gleaming visions of earth, sea, sky, and space, as well as the pumping dark of the body's interior, a cosmos within the cosmos. His holistic perception encompasses every element in the cycle of life and death, from quarks to stars, maggots to cattle, geese to humans, as he parses every chapter and verse in the drama of eating and being eaten, flourishing and decaying, feeling, thinking, praying, and forgetting. Olsen is passionate, often headlong, but his vital language is beautifully formed, spiky with bonelike consonants and warm and round with the flesh of vowels. Chicago landscapes are webbed with lightning, doused with storms, and operatic in their view of civilization. In Cornwall, he discovers a ruined chapel, glorious in its disintegration, a holy process stymied in a drawer full of hummingbirds in the Field Museum, brilliantly hued and mummified captives Olsen equates with every victim of conquest, exile, and massacre. Ravishingly visual and evocatively metaphysical, Olsen's poems illuminate unity in the universe, wildness in the heart. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 89 pages
• Publisher: Triquarterly (January 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810151073
• ISBN-13: 978-0810151079
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 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: #1,456,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning and fun and beautiful, March 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Trouble Lights (Paperback)

William Olsen has written yet another wonderful book of poems. He has a madman's eye for beauty, and he has discovered in this seemingly troubled world all kinds of treasures to refute the
prophets of despair and defeat that write most of the modern poetry of today. Olsen's high humor lurks just below the surface and between the lines. You can't see it in the poems, but you can see it on the face of anyone you hand the book to and say, "here, read this one." He is a mind on a treasure hunt, a brain that serves as a butterfly net as he lives his life saving absolutely EVERYTHING GOOD for you and for me. I have bought two extra copies already for friends. They say what I say. You can read these for a fifth and sixth time and they will all appear to be new. None of these poems stays the same. They get better every time you read them. This is a book you will enjoy very very much.