Lord Dragonfly

Lord Dragonfly: Five Sequences
By William Heyen

As Richard Wilbur has written, “Some poets are makers of lines, some of single poems, and some, like William Heyen, have the stamina and resourcefulness to work in long suites or sequences.” LORD DRAGONFLY, described by the author as “a sequence of sequences,” brings together for the first time five groups of poems that were previously published individually only in limited editions now out of print. The great range and lyric power demonstrated in Heyen’s highly-praised The Swastika Poems (1977) and Long Island Light (1979) are here apparent again, and perhaps in even sharper relief. The reader of these sequences, from the brooding opening of The Ash to the ecstatic conclusion of Evening Dawning, will agree that LORD DRAGONFLY is an unusual and important book from one of our finest poets.