Reviews
Like the night guard in the title poem of his new collection, Daniel Anderson takes us on memorial rounds with him, checking latches and looking into dark corners, sometimes surprised—often not—at what's to be found there.
Daniel Anderson's fine new poems are plain spoken, and yet their outwardness turns subtly inward as we read and endows each subject with depth and discovery.
The finely rendered voice in these poems is one of wisdom and vulnerability, hard–earned resolve, and steadfast wonder. Anderson’s attention—a 'supple, taut, and silken net'—suspends between seemingly opposite and equally forceful gravities, one that belongs to 'a dull, protracted age / Of worry, ambiguity, and doubt,' and the other to a pure desire 'that certain days—this one— / may never end.' The result is transfiguring. Anderson is in firm possession of the rare ability to make 'our exhausted, ruthless world / seem limitless once more.' I am supremely grateful for The Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel.
The sensory realm of these poems is as slow and subtle as melting snow. The world is muffled and muted. What matters is how the mind goes into the observed world to illuminate it with thought, to stir its flagging passions, and even to bring it hope. This is a jolting and beautiful book, one I will go back to again and again.
Book Details
I. The Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel
Pardon and Amnesty
Almost
In Vino Veritas
From Here to There
Epithalamion in a Minor Key
At Advent's End
II. This First Hot Saturday in May
A Late Apology
Provinces
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I. The Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel
Pardon and Amnesty
Almost
In Vino Veritas
From Here to There
Epithalamion in a Minor Key
At Advent's End
II. This First Hot Saturday in May
A Late Apology
Provinces
Teaching The Merchant of Venice
The Hills, Beautiful Hills
Insomnia at Forty-Six
Easter Sundays
III. Labor Day
The Novelist to His Characters
Someone Is Burning Leaves
Four Voices for the Afterlife
Mare Cognitum
Now: A Benediction
Acknowledgments