The Crumb Road

by Maitreyabandhu

Maitreyabandhu’s thematically varied debut collection includes poems of spiritual transcendence as well as meditations on love, memory and sexuality. Sometimes comic, often elegiac, the poems convey the pleasures and terrors of childhood as well as the mystical world of fable. Truthful, tender, and written with a kind of wonderment, the collection culminates in ‘Stephen’, an extended sequence of poems exploring a clandestine, and finally tragic, relationship between two boys. For Maitreyabandhu – a Buddhist teacher and member of the Triratna Buddhist Order for over twenty years – The Crumb Road is an image for the unreliability of memory, and for the vital thread of human value that connects us to the spiritual world. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Genres: Poetry

79 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2013

Reviews

[Vishvapani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subtle poetry that reveals layers and textures as one reads it. Maitreyabandhu's main subject, so far as I can see, is the kinds of experience that elude direct expression: meditative experience and the ramifications of seemingly ordinary experience. He writes a lot about memory and perception, but his interest is particularly in their unreliability. The strongest pieces, on this reading, seemed to me the more complex. But I will keep rereading them and hope to write a fuller review.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed in this collection, it felt too much like the best of poems written over several years - I wanted more from it. However that said the section about Stephen was beautful and affecting - I wanted more like this.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

Reviewed by The Guardian (5 Jul 2013)

[Catherine Ayres · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful, gentle book. Subtly startling in places.