Broken Ground, by William Logan (introduction)

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“Arguably the most industrious and notorious poet-critic to brandish that hyphen like a knife between his teeth since his acknowledged master Randall Jarrell. . . . He often comes off as nothing so much as the Dirty Harry of the poetry beat.”

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logan

Praise for William Logan

—David Barber, New York Times Book Review

Broken Ground

—David Mason, Hudson Review

“[Logan’s collections] are a masterclass in how to read.” —Duncan Wu, Times Higher Education Supplement William Logan is Alumni/ae Professor at the University of Florida. He is the author of seven books of criticism, most recently Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods: Poetry in the Shadow of the Past (Columbia, 2018), and eleven books of poetry. Logan has won the inaugural Randall Jarrell Award in Poetry Criticism, the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, the Staige D. Blackford Prize for Nonfiction, the Allen Tate Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.

cover image: debora greger cover design: chang jae lee

“Our wittiest critic of contemporary verse.” —James Marcus, Newsday

“Logan . . . should be declared a national treasure. One of our greatest living critics, he is also one of our sanest; but it is his curiosity that is his finest gift.” —Library Journal

C O L U M B I A U N I V E R S I TY P R E S S

NEW YORK

Poetr y and the Demon of Histor y

“Easily the best poetry reviewer we have.”

Broken Ground Poetr y and the Demon of Histor y

william logan

cup.columbia.edu

printed in the u.s.a.

COLUMBIA

n Broken Ground, William Logan explores the works of canonical and contemporary poets, rediscovering the lushness of imagination and depth of feeling that distinguish poetry as a literary art. The book includes long essays on Emily Dickinson’s envelopes, Ezra Pound’s wrestling with Chinese, Robert Frost’s letters, Philip Larkin’s train station, and Mrs. Custer’s volume of Tennyson, each teasing out the depths beneath the surface of the page. Broken Ground also presents the latest run of Logan’s infamous poetry chronicles and reviews, which for twentyfive years have bedeviled American verse. Logan believes that poetry criticism must be both adventurous and forthright—and that no reader should settle for being told that every poet is a genius. Among the poets under review by the “preeminent poet-critic of his generation” and “most hated man in American poetry” are Anne Carson, Jorie Graham, Paul Muldoon, John Ashbery, Geoffrey Hill, Louise Glück, John Berryman, Marianne Moore, Frederick Seidel, Les Murray, Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, Johnny Cash, James Franco, and the former archbishop of Canterbury. Logan’s criticism stands on the broken ground of poetry, soaked in history and soiled by it. These essays and reviews work in the deep undercurrents of our poetry, judging the weak and the strong but finding in weakness and strength what endures.


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Broken Ground, by William Logan (introduction) by Columbia University Press - Issuu