Description
Book SynopsisThe 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."
Trade ReviewReading 'Aubade,' the tiny poem [concluding] Coyle's…collection is like witnessing a hole-in-one. It's a single, flawless stroke. -- Eric McHenry * The New York Times *
Coyle is absolutely on top of his game [and] easily one of the best poets of his generation. -- David Mason * The 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 *
Bill Coyle is a welcome new voice in a crowded choir....A winning combination and collection. -- Brad Leithauserd, Author Of Darlington's
