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Boneshepherds: Poems
"Laced with a hopefulness born not just of Patrick Rosal's tremendous gifts as a poet, but of his humanity."―Terrance Hayes In his third collection of poems, Patrick Rosal continues his rhythmic march through a world in which violence and beauty mix all too often―a paradoxical world in which the music of Chopin gives way to a knifing, yet the funk of homelessness cannot stifle the urge for human connection.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published October 18, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 24, 2015
I’m kind of mad at myself for not reading this sooner. But by the time I got this, bought and signed by him, I kind of steamed myself out of poetry. And also because during that time I didn’t read as much poetry as I do now. Now that I do, I feel mad at myself for not buying and supporting more poets. Now I can’t get enough of it, especially since a lot of them, in my opinion are small/light reads, and are just as emotionally stimulating than your average novel, at least for me these days. And of course I don’t have a lot poetry books, so I read literary zines instead.
“The way, in death, one becomes
all the sounds one cannot make-
The sum total of everything
the living cannot say. Sometimes
we have to sing just to figure out
what we cannot say.”
Based on my vague memory, I read it a long time ago, this collection is totally different from American Kundiman, which was released five years before this came out. And this collection was released four years ago. So there’s a lot of change from AK to Boneshepards, which is a lot more story focused, sort of bittersweet, and feels a lot like reminiscing of the past, which I assume is most poetry, however this is a lot softer. The musicality of his poetry has become ballads or soft jazz piano in this collection, instead of the hip-hop of American Kundiman. It’s sentimental, personal, self-reflective, it just feels so much closer, delicate and sensitive, wary of the fact that the hardness is thawing out a bit. Of course, like his previous collection there are still some poems with violence, bloodshed, and dysfunction, but this one had a light ambiance.
“I know this much. There is a man in Puerto Plata who can tell me
everything I need to know about the history of France
in a language his great grandfathers made up. I’ve come back
to live in someone else’s house in the richest country
in the universe. None of us belongs anywhere
without love. Everything has began to die.
Some of us keep shouting your name.”
Maybe because I read it in my mother’s room where it was quiet with a faint white light? Maybe, I was just super ready to read this? It’s also more nostalgic, with some pondering of those who are dead or have died in some other form that doesn’t involve bloodshed. Nostalgia is a heavy theme in poetry, nostalgia is the reason why we tell stories, fictional or not.
It’s about dying as in leaving and never seeing you again and remembering as in reminiscing and mourning the fact that you won’t experience it once again.
“Like me,
they let all the languages of their world pass
through them, as if that were a way
of moving on, and the one word always
poised upon their tongue is goodbye.”
Rating: 4.5/5
“The way, in death, one becomes
all the sounds one cannot make-
The sum total of everything
the living cannot say. Sometimes
we have to sing just to figure out
what we cannot say.”
Based on my vague memory, I read it a long time ago, this collection is totally different from American Kundiman, which was released five years before this came out. And this collection was released four years ago. So there’s a lot of change from AK to Boneshepards, which is a lot more story focused, sort of bittersweet, and feels a lot like reminiscing of the past, which I assume is most poetry, however this is a lot softer. The musicality of his poetry has become ballads or soft jazz piano in this collection, instead of the hip-hop of American Kundiman. It’s sentimental, personal, self-reflective, it just feels so much closer, delicate and sensitive, wary of the fact that the hardness is thawing out a bit. Of course, like his previous collection there are still some poems with violence, bloodshed, and dysfunction, but this one had a light ambiance.
“I know this much. There is a man in Puerto Plata who can tell me
everything I need to know about the history of France
in a language his great grandfathers made up. I’ve come back
to live in someone else’s house in the richest country
in the universe. None of us belongs anywhere
without love. Everything has began to die.
Some of us keep shouting your name.”
Maybe because I read it in my mother’s room where it was quiet with a faint white light? Maybe, I was just super ready to read this? It’s also more nostalgic, with some pondering of those who are dead or have died in some other form that doesn’t involve bloodshed. Nostalgia is a heavy theme in poetry, nostalgia is the reason why we tell stories, fictional or not.
It’s about dying as in leaving and never seeing you again and remembering as in reminiscing and mourning the fact that you won’t experience it once again.
“Like me,
they let all the languages of their world pass
through them, as if that were a way
of moving on, and the one word always
poised upon their tongue is goodbye.”
Rating: 4.5/5
November 6, 2011
Wow. The music, the precise, beautiful language and the rhythm of Pat's work always blows me away. This collection has a force that can be felt in the chest. It's gritty, heart-wrenching and devastatingly gorgeous. A few poems that really stick out to me are "Guitar," "A Tradition of Pianos," and "Despedida Ardiente." Seriously good stuff and highly recommended.
January 26, 2023
"The Tradition of Pianos" : http://inreview.podbean.com/2010/11/1...
November 3, 2012
Intelligent, sincere, and moving. In luminous language and sharp insight, this is a real delight.
July 9, 2015
God. Damn.
October 17, 2019
Rosal's poems always feel like music to me. There's something lush about his choice of words, but more importantly, a sense of lyricism, rhythm, and song that weaves through all of his lines. This probably isn't coincidental -- so many of his books are about music, and it's clear that he is influenced by a love of music in his life. But this is what makes his poems so delicious to read. They're at once beautiful and raw. His poems towards the end of the book especially caught me. His poem to his fiancee, for example, "A Tradition of Pianos" is simply breathtaking. But I also loved "To The Young Man Who Jumped Into the Hudson to Retrieve a Backpack Full of His Poems", "On the First Meeting of Your Father and Your Mother on a Train in Australia", and "Guitar". Though honestly, I really loved them all.
August 23, 2025
Next on my Sealey Challenge Lite was this collection recommended by Jon Sands in his Emotional Historians class. I’ll be honest that it wasn’t my cup of tea. Though imaginative and visceral, the imagery was too gruesome for my taste. I mean, he was able to make kissing a baby sound disgusting. That’s true talent, honestly. For me, the collection was also a meditation on attention. I admit that I have struggled against our modern-era goldfish-esque attention span, so these pages-long poems felt like a stretch to read all the way through. Though I could recognize the craftsmanship in the collection, it won’t be one I’ll revisit any time soon, but I bet other readers would enjoy reading it.
August 9, 2017
Patrick Rosal is <3 <3 <3
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April 9, 2020oooooowwwweeeee!
December 16, 2020
These are some of the most beautiful homes in both content and craft that I have read all year. A master of the long line, Patrick Rosal is a poet to savior like the symphony he is
June 28, 2013
Haunting and hip.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews