Desperate Measures

Despite his five collections of poetry, William Logan remains best-known as a strong-willed reviewer; his determined attacks-and his carefully crafted praise-turn up regularly in Parnassus, the New Criterion and the Washington Post. Logan's third collection of reviews and essays, Desperate Measures, finds his well-turned, sharpened sentences in fine form. Logan (a professor at the University of Florida) proffers careful appreciations of Frost, Geoffrey Hill, Robert Lowell and several minor masters of inherited forms (Edgar Bowers, J. V. Cunningham), but also blasts away at Ashbery, Bly, Merwin, Les Murray, Jorie Graham and other contemporary targets.