Description
Book SynopsisIn John Foy's
Night Vision, wars go on in the Middle East, violence is never far away, and the creatures of the field are “much the worse / for having been beneath the rotor
blades.” Written in an uncluttered idiom, these poems, technically adept, play across a range of forms in a voice that stands out for its bitter clarity and directness. They are by turns contemplative and savage, invoking Meister Eckhart but acknowledging that “we die like dogs in the deep snow.” If they offer solace at all, it’s in a plainspoken, dark humor. The result is an emotional immediacy unique in American poetry.
Trade Review"Night Vision is a book that sees the dark and sees in the dark, with a clarity that few poets achieve even in daylight. Whether John Foy is writing about the casualties of war or the casualties of old age, he is a witness to our age of unsettled violence: “everyone knows/ we die like dogs in the deep snow,” he writes. But this bitter knowledge, when spoken in lines of such conviction and formal accomplish- ment, can also be beautiful. To read John Foy is to be in the company of a strong mind and a masterful poet."
—Adam Kirsch
"Patiently and thoughtfully observant, John Foy has a sharp eye for both human society and the natural world. Like D. H. Lawrence and Elizabeth Bishop, he writes especially well about animals and our interactions with them. A similar warmth and sympathy inform his poems about parents and children. This excellent collection acknowledges the calamities of our time but also movingly affirms the realities of love and meaningful labor."
—Timothy Steele
"John Foy brings us eye to eye with the real as only a gifted poet can. His elegant and gritty language probes human nature. His poems embody unflinching insights into love and death, quotidian pleasure and self-acceptance—all of which create a vision of language that affirms the deeper self."
—Peter Balakian
