It was a terrible cloud at midnight, by Alessandra Lynch

Selected by James Richardson as Winner of the 2008 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize "Some books sit down and talk to you: Alessandra Lynch’s It was a terrible cloud at twilight is a vision. You find yourself immediately in some vivid, chill season near the end of the world, maybe in the dark wood where the hardest of the fairy tales took place. Everywhere are signs, the ruins and promises of something momentous you somehow just missed or are about to encounter, and line after line there is a sight or phrase you would linger over…except that there, just ahead, is another just as fascinating. I envy and love this work for all it shows us how to feel and say. It was a terrible cloud at twilight is just about the strangest book I know that still makes perfect sense." —James Richardson