William Logan

Biography

William Logan’s books of poetry include Rift of Light (Penguin, 2017) and Madame X (Penguin, 2012). His numerous books of criticism include Our Savage Art: Poetry and the Civil Tongue (Columbia, 2009). He is a regular critic for the New York Times Book Review and the New Criterion. He is Alumni/ae Professor of English at the University of Florida.

See Work

POETRY / Fall 2005

Apologia pro Vita Sua

By William Logan
CRITICISM / Fall 2005

The Most Contemptible Moth: Lowell in Letters

By William Logan

A man’s letters have a different claim on privacy than his poems and therefore a different claim on truth. Letters lie in the uneasy realm between writing published (the words, if not anonymous, a writer must stand by) and writing meant for...

ESSAYS / Spring 2005

Prisoner, Fancy-Man, Rowdy, Lawyer, Physician, Priest: Whitman’s Brags

By William Logan

Whitman was the first American poet who ought to have been incomprehensible anywhere else, yet he had many English admirers. They bought his books direct from America, a tedious and expensive business (customs duties were crippling); they...

POETRY / Spring 2004

Untitled in Four Parts

By William Logan

Dawn boils up like milk, cloudy with disrespect.
Like Tin Pan Alley hacks, paid for each line,
neighborhood wrens bang out their high-pitched notes.

POETRY / Spring 2004

Couplets

By William Logan

Once he looked deep in her muddy brown eyes
and saw nothing there but the whirling flies.