The Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction)

The poems in __The Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel__ navigate the evanescent boundaries between the public and the private self. Daniel Anderson’s settings are often social but never fail to turn inward, drowning out the chatter of conversation to quietly observe the truths that we simultaneously share and withhold from one another―even as we visit friends, celebrate a young couple’s union, or eavesdrop on the conversations of others. These twenty poems include meditations on teaching hungover undergraduates, wine tasting among snobs, and engaging the war on terror from the comfort of the suburbs. They are alternately driven by ornamental language that seeks to clarify and crystallize the beauties of our common world and the poet’s faith that fellowship ultimately trumps partisanship. Even as they weigh and measure the darkness of the heart and the sometimes rash and stingy movements of the mind, the poems refrain from pronouncing judgment on their characters. As much as they ponder, they also celebrate in exact, careful, and loving terms the haunting and bracing stimuli from which they originate. In his third collection of poems, Daniel Anderson ponders and celebrates the images, sounds, and tastes of contemporary life. The poems in The Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel navigate the evanescent boundaries between the public and the private self. Daniel Anderson's settings are often social but never fail to turn inward, drowning out the chatter of conversation to quietly observe the truths that we simultaneously share and withhold from one another—even as we visit friends, celebrate a young couple's union, or eavesdrop on the conversations of others. These twenty poems include meditations on teaching hungover undergraduates, wine tasting among snobs, and engaging the war on terror from the comfort of the suburbs. They are alternately driven by ornamental language that seeks to clarify and crystallize the beauties of our common world and the poet's faith that fellowship ultimately trumps partisanship. Even as they weigh and measure the darkness of the heart and the sometimes rash and stingy movements of the mind, the poems refrain from pronouncing judgment on their characters. As much as they ponder, they also celebrate in exact, careful, and loving terms the haunting and bracing stimuli from which they originate.

The poems in The Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel navigate the evanescent boundaries between the public and the private self. Daniel Anderson’s settings are often social but never fail to turn inward, drowning out the chatter of conversation to quietly observe the truths that we simultaneously share and withhold from one another—even as we visit friends, celebrate a young couple’s union, or eavesdrop on the conversations of others.

These twenty poems include meditations on teaching hungover undergraduates, wine tasting among snobs, and engaging the war on terror from the comfort of the suburbs. They are alternately driven by ornamental language that seeks to clarify and crystallize the beauties of our common world and the poet’s faith that fellowship ultimately trumps partisanship. Even as they weigh and measure the darkness of the heart and the sometimes rash and stingy movements of the mind, the poems refrain from pronouncing judgment on their characters. As much as they ponder, they also celebrate in exact, careful, and loving terms the haunting and bracing stimuli from which they originate.

Cover 1 Contents 10 I: The Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel 14 Pardon and Amnesty 16 Almost 19 In Vino Veritas 22 From Here to There 26 Epithalamion in a Minor Key 29 At Advent’s End 32 II: This First Hot Saturday in May 38 A Late Apology 40 Provinces 42 Teaching The Merchant of Venice 45 The Hills, Beautiful Hills 48 Insomnia at Forty-Six 51 Easter Sundays 53 III: Labor Day 58 The Novelist to His Characters 60 Someone Is Burning Leaves 62 Four Voices for the Afterlife 65 Mare Cognitum 71 Now: A Benediction 73 Acknowledgments 76