Macbeth in Venice

by William Logan

One of the most technically gifted poets of his generation, William Logan here presents four sequences, each of which is haunted by the battered history of the enchanted city of two refugees from Nazi Germany replay a version of the Aeneid that shadows their lives in and out of Venice; the comedy of Tiepolo's Punchinello drawings are given mocking narrative; a modern traveler finds in Venice's insects, birds, and fish a nature that endures within an unnatural city; and, in a formal sequence reminiscent of W. H. Auden's "The Sea and the Mirror," King James commissions a revision of Macbeth in order to impress the chief magistrate. These new poems showcase Logan's trademark refinement and erudition.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2003

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Amara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like his Strange Flesh collection better. I expected to love this considering my adoration for Macbeth, but alas, it fell short.

[B.L. Aldrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, excellent, excellent. Modern form poetry at its finest. The technical proficiency required of form poetry makes word choice and precision alone difficult tasks enough to achieve, and that's without managing to simultaneously squeeze meaning from whatever words one cobbles together. Not only has Logan woven history, philosophy, and wit into these pieces, but in clean, flawless form poems that never cave to weak rhymes or imprecise syllable counts. The feat lies in making it all look so effortless. Well done, Mr. Logan. Well done.