William Logan (poet)

William Logan. Photo by Charles Ellmaker. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

William Logan
Born	1950 Boston, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Yale University, University of Iowa

William Logan (born 1950) is an American poet, literary critic, and academic.

Life

Logan was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Nancy (Damon) and W. Donald Logan, Jr.. He earned a B.A. in 1972 from Yale University, and a M.F.A. in 1975 from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.

A professor of creative writing at the University of Florida, he lives in Gainesville, Florida and Cambridge, England with his wife, the poet and artist Debora Greger.

Logan has authored 8 books of poetry as well as 5 books of criticism. His poetry reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review. Many of these reviews have been quite controversial, leading Slate magazine to call him "the most hated man in American poetry . . .[and] its guiltiest pleasure".

Writing

Poetry

Logan has been praised by many such as Richard Tillinghast (The New York Times Book Review) who wrote that, “when he manages to avoid obscurity, Logan writes with vigor, almost classical restraint, and a fine sense of musicality". Poetry noted his " elegant, accomplished, and frequently difficult, prosody."

Logan denies the implication of obscurity or difficulty, telling Contemporary Authors, for instance that: "I’ve never considered my poetry difficult, a word that implies not just impaction, but giddy or indolent pig-headedness. If my poetry seems overly difficult to others, contemporary poetry doesn’t seem difficult enough to me."

Reviews

Being a Formalist poet himself, Logan's small handful of positive reviews tend to go to well-established, conservative poets (usually deceased) who were/are masters of formal verse like Geoffrey Hill, Frederick Seidel, Robert Lowell, and Elizabeth Bishop. But he has also fiercely criticized other formalist poets like Les Murray and Derek Walcott, and praised a small handful of free verse poets like Louise Gluck and Anne Carson. Logan has been especially critical of popular free verse poets like Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, and Sharon Olds as well as more experimental poets like Jorie Graham and Rae Armantrout. Although he's best known for his often extreme reviews of poets, Logan has written some mixed reviews of poets like Kay Ryan, John Ashbery, and Frank O'Hara whom he has judged to be flawed but admirable.

Recognition

• National Book Critics Circle award for criticism
• Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle
• Peter I.B. Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets
• John Masefield and Celia B. Wagner Awards from the Poetry Society of America
• J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from Poetry
• John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence
• Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship

Publications

Poetry

• Dream of Dying. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1980.
• Sad-faced Men. Boston: Godine, 1982.
• Difficulty. Salamander, 1984; Boston: Godine, 1985.
• Moorhen. Omaha, NE: Abattoir, 1984.
• Sullen Weedy Lakes. Boston: Godine, 1988.
• Vain Empires. New York: Penguin, 1998; Calstock, UK: Peterloo Press, 1998.
• Night Battle. New York: Penguin, 1999.
• Poetry and the Age. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000.
• Macbeth in Venice. New York: Penguin, 2003.
• The Whispering Gallery. New York: Penguin, 2005.
• Strange Flesh. New York: Penguin, 2008.
• Madam X. New York: Penguin, 2012.

Criticism

• All the Rage: Prose on poetry, 1976-1992. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
• Reputations of the Tongue: On poets and poetry. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1999.
• Desperate Measures. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2002.
• The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the age of tin. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
• Our Savage Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

Edited

• Certain Solitudes: On the poetry of Donald Justice (edited with Dana Gioia). Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1997.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

See also

• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

External links

Poems

• William Logan b. 1950 at the Poetry Foundation

Prose

• Logan's review of The Oxford Book of American Poetry in The New York Times, April 16, 2006
• Review of Geoffrey Hill
• William Logan at YouTube

About

• University of Florida Biography
• "Versed Nightmare" at Slate
• On the Poetry of William Logan at PoemShape
•  review of The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the age of tin at Verse magazine