William Heyen – författare

The Candle is a record, unlike any other in literature, of an American poet's staring into the central atrocities of the twentieth century, of his struggle against soul-sickness as he attempts, over almost fifty years, by way of despised and barbaric poetry (in Theodor Adorno's terms), to find ways to realise (make real), to understand, and to remember.

Presents work by poets of three generations: William Heyen, H.L. Hix, and Dante Di Stefano. It was Di Stefano’s new book, Lullaby with Incendiary Device, which inspired this tribute to three generations. Lullaby is deeply immersed in a soon-to-be-realised future, in which Di Stefano’s daughter faces an array of 21st century challenges. For the last half-century, Heyen’s poetry has explored world history, from Nature, to Native Americans, to the Holocaust and the atom bomb, the Iraq Wars, to the British Royals. In this book, Heyen presents another entry into his Holocaust opus, The Nazi Patrol. H.L. Hix’s work is also inextricably involved with the world as seen in a recent collection, American Anger, which explores the psychology of rage underneath recent political turmoil, yet it also turns inward, creating new forms to join the world and the inner life. This theme is most prominent here, in How It Is That We.

William Heyen was the first poet in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace on Long Island.