From a two-time winner of the National Poetry Series competition, a bold new collection of poems lamenting the state of the world--and offering poetry that might save it

"Civil twilight" occurs just before dawn and just after dusk, when there is still light enough to distinguish the shapes and contours of objects but not the richness of their detail.

Beginning with the idea that nothing can be seen clearly in the light of the present, the poems in Civil Twilight attempt to resuscitate lyric's revelatory impulse by taking nothing for...