Arthur Vogelsang

Arthur Vogelsang is the author of six previous books of poetry, including Twentieth Century Women and Cities and Towns, which received the Juniper Prize. His work has been included in numerous anthologies such as The Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, The New Breadloaf Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and American Hybrid. Vogelsang was coeditor of the Norton anthology The Body Electric: America’s Best Poetry from The American Poetry Review. He is the recipient of a California Arts Council fellowship and three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry.

Orbit

By Arthur Vogelsang

Orbit connects the intimate with what is farthest from us, mixing what we can imagine with what is daily and near. Landscapes stretch from stable and fulfilling domestic interiors to the destiny of our sun as an exploding red giant. That dilemma of human fertility and love facing ultimate destruction is orchestrated by the author’s provocative voice and coiled lines, which fondle and handle the reader’s heart and mind in a bright light. The book insists on connecting the three eras of human experience – Then, Now, and When – at every turn. Orbit continues the unique aesthetic of Vogelsang’s first five award-winning books through its “oddly direct original persona,” its “mind – prophetic, wild, loony,” its “language of surveillance and trembling,” and the poems’ ability “to find and magnify the emotion suddenly, instantaneously” (comments draw from other poets’ reviews.) Vogelsang’s new book Orbit is a dialogue between daily life and transcendent vision, insisting on the reality of each.