Trouble Lights [Paperback]

Traveling from the rural Midwest and Chicago to the outposts of Cornwall and Guangzhou, William Olsen searches for the miracle of wholeness in small details. An urgency inhabits his poems as they lament and protest a pandemic disrespect for all things natural and the replacement of such with material progress. It is his distinct awe for our universe that offers hope for retrieving all that is being lost.

WILLIAM OLSEN is a professor of English at Western Michigan University. He has received fellowships from the NEA and Bread Loaf and has won numerous awards for his poetry, including a Pushcart Prize and two Academy of American Poets awards. His two previous poetry collections are Vision of a Storm Cloud and The Hand of God and a Few Bright Flowers

"William Olsen'sTrouble Lightsis the kind of book you'll willingly let break your heart because Olsen makes our mortality at once terrible and irresistible. . . . [W]e remember what we come to poetry for . . . the thrill of the alive with all its risks and mercies." —Beckian Fritz Goldberg, author ofNever Be the Horse

"Olsen reminds us that poetry is a difficult and essential art, not a parlor game, not an effete posture. We are fortunate that poems such as his exist." —David Wojahn, author ofStrange Good Fortune