William Logan (born 1950) is an American
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
,
critic
A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...
and scholar.
Life
Logan was born in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
, to W. Donald Logan, Jr. and Nancy Damon Logan. He lives in
Gainesville, Florida
Gainesville is the county seat of Alachua County, Florida, Alachua County, Florida, and the largest city in North Central Florida, with a population of 141,085 in 2020. It is the principal city of the Gainesville metropolitan area, Florida, Gaine ...
and
Cambridge, England
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge became ...
with his wife, the poet and artist,
Debora Greger
Debora Greger (born 1949) is an American poet as well as a visual artist.
She was raised in Richland, Washington.
She attended the University of Washington and then the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She then went on to hold fellowships at the Fine Art ...
. Educated at
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
(BA, 1972) and the
Iowa Writers' Workshop
The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wri ...
at the
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...
(MFA, 1975), he has authored eight books of
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
as well as five books of
criticism
Criticism is the construction of a judgement about the negative qualities of someone or something. Criticism can range from impromptu comments to a written detailed response. , ''"the act of giving your opinion or judgment about the good or bad q ...
.
Work
He is a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
of
creative writing
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...
at the
University of Florida
The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...
. Logan's poetry reviews have appeared in the ''
New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
''. Many of these reviews have been quite controversial, leading Slate magazine to call him "the most hated man in American poetry...
ndits guiltiest pleasure". Logan's own poetry has received generally positive reviews. The poet
Richard Tillinghast
Richard Tillinghast (born 25 November 1940 in Memphis, Tennessee) is a poet and author.
Life
Richard Tillinghast is a native of Memphis, Tennessee, a graduate of Sewanee (BA, 1962) and Harvard (MA, 1963; PhD, 1970). He has taught at Harvard as a ...
wrote, "when he manages to avoid obscurity, Mr. Logan writes with vigor, almost classical restraint and a fine sense of musicality." Logan's work has also received positive notices from ''The New York Times Book Review'', ''Poetry'' and ''Publishers Weekly''.
In a review in ''Poetry'' magazine, Michael Scharf favorably compared the poetry from Logan's 1999 collection ''Night Battle'' with the work of the poet
Geoffrey Hill
Sir Geoffrey William Hill, FRSL (18 June 1932 – 30 June 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be ...
.
Reviews
Being a formalist poet himself, Logan's handful of positive reviews tend to go to well-established, conservative poets (usually deceased) who were/are masters of formal verse like
Geoffrey Hill
Sir Geoffrey William Hill, FRSL (18 June 1932 – 30 June 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be ...
,
Frederick Seidel
Frederick Seidel (born February 19, 1936) is an American poet.
Biography
Seidel was born to a family of Russian Jewish descent in St. Louis, Missouri in 1936. His family owned Seidel Coal and Coke, which supplied coal to the brewing industry in St ...
,
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects i ...
, and
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American people, American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the N ...
. But he has also fiercely criticized other formalist poets like
Les Murray and
Derek Walcott
Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem ''Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcot ...
and praised a few free verse poets like
Louise Gluck
Louise or Luise may refer to:
* Louise (given name)
Arts Songs
* "Louise" (Bonnie Tyler song), 2005
* "Louise" (The Human League song), 1984
* "Louise" (Jett Rebel song), 2013
* "Louise" (Maurice Chevalier song), 1929
*"Louise", by Clan of ...
and
Anne Carson
Anne Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor.
Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across the Unit ...
. Logan has been especially critical of popular free verse poets like
Mary Oliver
Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature, rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary ...
,
Billy Collins
William James Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York (retired, 2016). Collins ...
, and
Sharon Olds
Sharon Olds (born November 12, 1942) is an American poet. Olds won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. as well as more experimental poets like
Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham (; born May 9, 1950) is an American poet. The Poetry Foundation called Graham "one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation." She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at ...
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
Kay Ryan (born September 21, 1945) is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. From 2008 to 2010 she was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate. In 2011 she was named ...
,
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic.
Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...
, and
Frank O'Hara
Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...
whom he has judged to be flawed but admirable.
Awards
*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
John William Corrington (October 28, 1932 – November 24, 1988) was an American film and television writer, novelist, poet, and lawyer.
Corrington attended St. John's High School (now known as Loyola College Prep), but was expelled after smo ...
Award for Literary Excellence
*
Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship
The Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship is given annually to a U.S.-born poet to spend one year outside North America in a country the recipient feels will most advance his or her work.
When poet Amy Lowell died in 1925, her will established ...
*
Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry
The Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry is an annual prize, administered by the ''Sewanee Review'' and the University of the South, awarded to a writer who has had a substantial and distinguished career. It was established through a bequ ...
2013
Bibliography
Poetry
"Christ Among the Moneychangers, 1929", ''Poetry Foundation''
* ttp://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=31 "The Other Place", ''Poetry'', April 2005br>"To a Wedding", ''Poetry'', November 2008
*''Sad-faced Men'' (1982)
*''Difficulty'' (1985)
*''Sullen Weedy Lakes'' (1988)
*''Vain Empires'' (1998), a ''New York Times'' "notable book of the year"
*''Night Battle'' (1999)
*''Macbeth in Venice'' (2003)
*''The Whispering Gallery'' (2005)
*''Strange Flesh'' (2008)
*''Madame X'' (2012)
*''Rift of Light'' (2017)
Criticism
*''All the Rage'' (1998)
*''Reputations of the Tongue'' (1999)
*''Desperate Measures'' (2002)
*''The Undiscovered Country'' (2005)
*''Our Savage Art'' (2009)
* ''Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure: The Dirty Art of Poetry'' (2014)
References
External links
University of Florida Biography
of ''The Oxford Book of American Poetry'' in ''The New York Times'', April 16, 2006
{{DEFAULTSORT:Logan, William
1950 births
Living people
American male poets
Formalist poets
University of Florida faculty
Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni