Dying of the Light

""The fierce wind strips the tree--and leaves become dust.
A family set apart from the amber hue of stormtime encroaching,
and a mule that smells danger. People hauling sodden nets
on one knee, like digging a grave or saying evening prayers.""
--From ""A Mountain Landscape""

Dying of the Light contains fifty new poems retelling Milton's Paradise Lost from a perspective sympathetic to Lucifer. The poems in Willett's debut collection balance the visceral with the visual, the domestic with the divine, and the static with the transformative. This collection follows Lucifer escaping heaven, living with trauma, and finally journeying to Eden to free humanity. It is a story about family violence and institutional power; it is a work that wrestles with religion from the inside.