The title of Michael Van Walleghen's new collection evokes thematic preoccupations that have shadowed him throughout his long career. In the Black Window, appearing as a phrase in the poems themselves, more generally points to Van Walleghen's enduring interest in the intersection of 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 become suddenly aware not only of our own reflection, but also of our complicity in some deeper mystery. Often quirky, odd, and disturbing, these poems also exemplify some of the most elegant formal free verse to be found in contemporary American poetry.

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.