The title of Michael Van Walleghen's new collection evokes thematic preoccupations that have shadowed him throughout his long career. Appearing as a phrase in the poems themselves, In the Black Window more generally points to Van Walleghen's enduring interest in the intersection between inner and outer worlds of experience—those liminal moments in other worlds where we become aware of ourselves. We live at once in a strictly personal, material dimension but also in a distinctly spiritual one. Yet, when looking from a lighted kitchen into a night-black window on a winter evening, we might perhaps become suddenly aware not only of our own reflection, but also of our complicity in some deeper mystery altogether.
| Contents New Poems (2003) Fidelity Taps The Ex Coyote Orchids Once More with Mother on the Beach Three Ring Circus When Ego Coelacanth The Other Shoe Light Takes the Tree The Franz Kafka Fellowship Hotel The Former Life Transformer Fixer-Upper Persimmon Fiord The Man in the Diving Suit Happiness The Wichita Poems (1975) The Light A Good Excuse The Permanence of Witches The Alligators Frankenstein's 4:00 A.M. Lament, or, The Man Who Lives Downstairs More Trouble with the Obvious (1981) More Trouble with the Obvious Crabapples The Sibyl at Snug Harbor The Fisherman The Honeymoon of the Muse Walking the Baby to the Liquor Store Fun at Crystal Lake Driving into Enid Arizona Movies Blue Tango (1981) The Age of Reason The Spoiled Child The Afterlife Meat Lake Limbo Blue Tango Bowling Alley Hold It Hanging on Like Death Fishing with Children Creative Writing Hamburger Heaven Atlantis Tall Birds Stalking (1994) 6 Adios Zarathustra The Awards Banquet In the Chariot Drawn by Dragons Crawlspace Late Tall Birds Stalking Uncomfortable Procedures The Last Neanderthal (1999) Clarity The Elephant in Winter Periscope Beauty Twilight of the Neanderthals Ghost Shangri-La In the Company of Manatees The Last Neanderthal
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: |Michael Van Walleghen is a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He won the Lamont Award for More Trouble with the Obvious, a Pushcart Prize, and two National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowships. His previous books include The Wichita Poems, Blue Tango, Tall Birds Stalking, and The Last Neanderthal. His poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, The Kenyon Review, Southern Review, and other highly respected journals.