From the Norton Anthology Introduction
“Part vaudevillian, part shaman, Arthur Vogelsang is a modern chronicler of that vast catalogue of American absurdities that also provoked Mark Twain and Lenny Bruce—yet he celebrates the tenacious hopes of the hopeless and repeats aloud the snarling prayers of the lost. Always stylistically provocative, Vogelsang uses capacious, serpentine lines to reel out the complex syntax of his narratives. Voice-driven and maximal, each its own tonal high-wire act, Arthur Vogelsang’s poems sear the imagination while either touching or ripping out the reader’s heart.” David St. John, "American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry", W.W. Norton & Co. 2009