Cities and Towns
“By far his best and most ambitious book to date and one of the best of last year….Vogelsang has found an interrogating voice at once dissembling and direct—and by direct I mean free of any rhetorical reference that doesn’t lead us immediately to his moment. Swiftian in his cagey unreliability, a kind of moral indignation, a menacing anger, Vogelsang has created the rare sound of dark, Juvenalian complaint. The tone feels barely contained, the ardent big talk almost too big for the imagination asked to hold it. ‘Big’ also applies to the size of the heart in these poems, their ability to find and magnify the emotion suddenly, instantaneously.” --Stanley Plumly, "Field," Number 56, Spring 1997