Rift of Light (Penguin Poets) - Softcover

Advance Praise for Rift of Light

"This is a smart book, but the intelligence doesn't neuter its emotions . . . Rift of Light is moving, and moored in tradition - an appropriate work by one of our finest poet-critics." - Nick Ripatrazone, National Review

"Logan's eleventh collection of poetry, Rift of Light, bears the mark of a profound maturity, of a poet in full command of his powers." --Kenyon Review

New work from a poet who "seems to be getting stronger with each collection" (David Yezzi, The New Criterion)

William Logan is widely admired as one of our foremost masters of free verse as well as formal poetry; his classical verve conjures up the past within the present and the foreshadowings of the present within the past.  In their sculptural turns, their pleasure in the glimmerings of the sublime while rummaging around in the particular, the poems in Rift of Light, Logan's eleventh collection, are a master class of powerful feeling embedded in language. Ranging from Martin Luther to an abandoned crow, from a midwife toad to a small-town janitor, from actress Louise Brooks to Dürer's stag beetle, Logan shows an encyclopedic attention to the passing world.  Dry, witty, skeptical, these dark and acidic poems prove a constant and informing delight.