Archeology of the Circle

New and Selected Poems

A “tough and honest” collection by one of America’s foremost poets of the combat experience—“A treasure of wonderful simplicity and complex beauty” (Clarence Major, author of Configurations).
 
With Song of Napalm, Bruce Weigl established himself as a poet of incomparable power and lyric fury, whose work stands as an elegy to the countless lives dramatically altered by war. Archeology of the Circle brings together the major work of this major American poet.
 
Collected here for the first time—from eight volumes of poetry spanning two decades—Archeology of the Circle charts Weigl’s literary arc toward a hard-bitten and sensuous lyric. Out of the horror of individual experience, he has fashioned poetry that offers solace to the disillusioned and bears transcendent resonance for all of us. Archeology of the Circle illustrates Bruce Weigl’s remarkable creative achievements and signifies his own personal salvation through his writing.
 
“Few poets of any generation have written so searingly into of the trauma of war, inscribing its wound while refusing the fragile suture of redemption. Here is the haunted utterance of diasporic selfhood, a poetry of aftermath and consequence, an answer to the call for an ethos of infinite obligation. In this, and in the breadth of his accomplishment, Bruce Weigl is one of the most important poets of our time.” —Carolyn Forch, author of The Country Between Us