Winner of the Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Competition
The Wild Severance delivers on its title. Pelicans, crows, gulls, fireflies, robins, cardinals, bluejays fly from its pages messaging time, illuminating our lives “in the falling darkness.” But it’s not only the natural world this poet loves: he writes of literary and mythological figures, elevating them to existence with language. There are people to remember, too: where a second child fits; how coffee brings a mother and father back from memory; present-day family encounters, “while I watch from my chair I see five generations.” This is a book rich with what is true and what lasts; V.P. Loggins makes us believe that there’s sanctity enough in this cold world to make poetry that honors the glorious.
— Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laurate
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ISBN: 978-1-892471-94-9
Cover Art and book design by Bertha Rogers
Cover Art: “Two Birds & Birch.”
The type and layout of The Wild Severance were designed and composed using Adobe InDesign.
Winner of the Cider Press Review Editor’s Book Prize
This is a whip-smart, original, and utterly lucid book. In poem after poem the reader is spoken with and not to. It’s like an intense conversation that you don’t want to end.
— Thomas Lux, author of nineteen books of poetry and winner of the Kingsley Tufts
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ISBN: 978-1-930781-50-4
Cover and book design by Caron Andregg
Cover photo Akkadian Cylinder seal and modern impression: bull-man combatting lion; nude hero combatting water buffalo; inscription. Gift of Nanette B. Kelekian, in memory of Charles Dikran and Beatrice Kelekian, 1999. Image in the public domain, courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series
The Fourth Paradise is filled with great care for the dead who have carried the long centuries to us. These are finely crafted poems which recognize the troubled beauty of this inheritance. Loggins melds the mythological within the ongoing history of the rolling fields of Connemara, and love's tangled arguments. The Fourth Paradise takes us to the edge of the landed world "to save what can't be saved, to hold/secure the magic of the world."
— Brian Turner, author of Here Bullet, winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award
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ISBN: 978-1-59948-224-8
Cover photo: Ladies View, Killarney National Park
Ladies View appears as The Fourth Paradise's cover photo, a scenic panorama on the Ring of Kerry in the Killarney National Park, Ireland. The name stems from the admiration of the view given by Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting during their 1861 visit.