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Literature & Fiction

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Night Battle (Poets, Penguin)

Night Battle (Poets, Penguin)

Breathtakingly intense poems about language, love, and the loss of purity in the world

Logan's newest work, The Night Battle, reveals to readers a rich, sensuous world where even pigeons "roost in judgment" like "mottled, maculate angels" and Long Island mothers lounge at a swimming club drinking the politeness of servants "like a sin" while "summer broke the dark with lightning storms." A section of the book entitled "Milton's Tongue" finds an old college "gaudy with painted ghosts" and an ancient church filled with "antique lives we have no common language with, except that they too were lies." Donald Hall, writing in the Iowa Review, said, "Logan writes like an angel--an elegant, literary angel." Indeed, Logan's world is populated not only by angels, but also by the lost souls of great poets and humble country people alike--it is a rich, sensuous world aching to retain beauty in a landscape pocked by sin.

Like Ovid on the Black Sea, the restless stranger
might feel such cruel beauty monotonous.
But, inshore, a crusty alligator steams,
nosing into reeds to let off passengers
or take on canvas sacks of mail,
as if the weather had never once been tender
or required, like love, a moment of surrender.
--from "Florida in January"

* Logan's last collection, Vain Empires, was a New York Times Notable Book

Country	USA
Author	William Logan
Binding	Paperback
EAN	9780140587982
ISBN	0140587985
Label	Penguin Books
Manufacturer	Penguin Books
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	95
PublicationDate	1999-10-01
Publisher	Penguin Books
ReleaseDate	1999-10-01
SKU	0918-WS0801-A04010-0140587985
Studio	Penguin Books

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