{"product_id":"deception-island-selected-early-poems-1974-1999-9781844717170","title":"Deception Island: Selected Early Poems, 1974-1999","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWilliam Logan’s poetry has been called elegant, difficult, cranky, formidable, dazzling, intoxicating, and ominous. For almost forty years, he has published poems that do not fit comfortably with the work of most of his contemporaries, and perhaps do not want to fit at all. The poems in \u003cem\u003eDeception Island\u003c\/em\u003e, a selection from his first five books, find their souls in the soullessness of modern life  –  if he looks upon the present with a withering eye, he sees the roots of later darkness in the early sins of culture. He might be called a moral poet, if he were not so suspicious of the certainties of morality. Nonetheless, he takes a resistant pleasure in the Byzantine contrivance of Venice, in the empty vision of the American west, and in the romantic longing of British landscape. He is equally at home in the privileges of free verse and in the older metrical line, sometimes roughened into sensibility, and rarely heard now with such command or control. Logan has an impeccable ear, a darkening view, and a belief that the poet’s job is to work in language, to do things with words, without attempting to persuade or forgive. In his poems, the echoes of Lowell, Auden, and other modern masters can sometimes be heard; but he has fused his influences into a poetic line that is personal in the private wrestling with language that the poet must accept as his task.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eSad-faced Men (1982): Logan writes like an angel  –  an elegant, literary angel.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Donald Hall * Iowa Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘The most hated man in American poetry,’ a title one could be proud of in this time of fawning and favor-trading.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Robert McDowell * Hudson Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe unloveliness of some of the feelings to which Logan gives vent is refreshing, a counter to the melancholy transcendentalism of many of his contemporaries.  He takes America personally. . . . Logan’s are never going to be the Nation’s Favourite Poems, but their presence reminds us of what poetry can include.\u003c\/p\u003e -- Sean O’Brien * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eMacbeth in Venice (2003): A construct of elegant thematic and formal irony…Logan’s strengths are those of a learned poet – a confident grasp of formal and thematic resource, an archivist’s love of the past and an impassioned concern for tradition.\u003c\/p\u003e -- J. T. Barbarese * New York Times Book Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Whispering Gallery (2005): In a very different vein, that scrupulous and at times ironic austerity distinguishes William Logan's new collection of poems, The Whispering Gallery. Its feelings are under pressure of exactitude and clarity. The flashes of humour are all the more telling.\u003c\/p\u003e -- George Steiner * Times Literary Supplement *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWilliam Logan’s work has frequently elicited comparison with W. H. Auden and Robert Lowell, and for good reason.\u003c\/p\u003e -- James Matthew Wilson * Notre Dame Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eStrange Flesh (2008): A hard-boiled formalist with a redoubtable aptitude for tersely fastidious diction and sinewy prosody whipped into fighting trim. . . . He can hold his own with just about anyone in vivisecting the vanity of human wishes with savage aplomb.\u003c\/p\u003e -- David Barber * New York Times Book Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eContents\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003efrom Sad-faced Men\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDeception Island\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Object\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eObserving Whales through Binoculars\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSeventy-Six\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTwo Lives\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTravel Report\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIce\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Man on the Bed\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Mantis\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA Portrait by Bellocq\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTatiana Kalatschova\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Lizard in His Medium\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003efrom Difficulty\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eClare and Silence\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eArcanum\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Angels among the Liars\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMoney and Dürer\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBlack Harbor\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSummer Island\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBlue Yacht\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTravel\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFolly\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGreen Island\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe King of Black Pudding\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFlour Mites as Moral Beings\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThis Island\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003efrom Sullen Weedy Lakes\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMoorhen\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eCapability Brown in the Tropics\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Rivers of England\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBanana Republics\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDebora Sleeping\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChrist Church, Oxford \/ 26 October 1881\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e3-13 September 1752\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Underground\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRacial Prejudice in Imperial Rome\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMajor Graves\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTo the Honourable Committee\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eJames at Sixty\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHaddocks’ Eyes\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAmbassador of Imperfect Mood\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003efrom Vain Empires\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Secession of Science from Christian Europe\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eChrist among the Moneychangers, 1929\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Long Vacations\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA Version of Pastoral\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Advent of Common Law in Littoral Pursuits\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFlorida Pest Control\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Shadow-Line\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eVan Gogh in the Pulpit\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBritain without Baedeker\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTristes Tropiques\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Burning Man\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnimal Actors on the English Stage after 1642 \u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFlower, of Zimbabwe\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eKeats in India\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003efrom Night Battle\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFlorida in January\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSundays in the South\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMother on the St. Johns\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003efrom Long Island Sins\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBlues for Penelope\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNothing\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe English Light\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLarkin\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003efrom Paradise Lost\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSong\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFor the Hostages\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Words\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDear AC\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDear DD\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMy Father as Madame Butterfly\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePera Palas\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAlexander Sarcophagus\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e","brand":"Salt Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51771556626775,"sku":"9781844717170","price":10.44,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781844717170.jpg?v=1758728260","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/deception-island-selected-early-poems-1974-1999-9781844717170","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}