William Bronk (1918–1999)

A great survey of Bronk's work. His poems are metaphysical in the best possible way- intelligent and curious about the biggest themes. There's not much of the 'I went to the store today and had an epiphany' style of thing here; Bronk is more interested in collective experiences, thoughts and worries. If you read the poems in chronological order, you can follow his changing attitude to our ability to know, our connection with a transcendent order, our joys and sufferings. He obviously thought at length in his poems, whether fleshing his ideas out in longer forms or making extremely dense, apothegmatic statements. My favorite of the latter:

Who's There

We need to separate ourselves from ourselves
to be ourselves. All that pain and power:
that isn't us. All that busyness,
the alienation and hate, those love affairs.

Can't wait to re-read this, or to pick up his Collected Poems instead, and get the full experience.… (més)

A chapbook with only four poems, for which $2.50 seemed a little steep in 1979 (I was making minimum wage), and of an awkward size and shape (longer than it is wide, not easily fit on a bookshelf), but so beautiful with its muted blue seaweedy cover and its thick ragged paper that I couldn't resist. (And there was the exclusivity factor: I had #436 of 500 copies!) And I liked the poems:

I can be glad in my death that, selfless,
the beauty of the world goes on; and then more:
even wordless, that beauty still.… (més)