Dust

by Brady Peterson

“Brady Peterson’s new book of poetry, shows us, again, his ability to find language that is accessible and yet demands that we linger—and return—to find meaning. His poetry reminds us of the hold of memory. It reminds us that love makes loss so much harder. Yet, love allows us to walk through the pain to what light there may be. Peterson’s search for that light is a gift.”~ Myra McLarey, Water from the Well “Peterson is a Texas transplant, a sacramental coffee drinker, a romantic morning watcher of dew dripping from eaves, and an elemental writer. Here a bit of Carver; here a bit of Bilgere and Heaney. His poems are ponderences of consequences, redemptions, and ‘the narrative escapes us.’ The narrative ruminations––of the mysterious path of innocence to experience––are among my favorites. Peterson is both a husband and father. ‘He sleeps under a fan and sweats the night / into his sheets, the window cracked enough / to let in the sound of a car passing, / his wife breathing next to him…’” ~ Scott Hightower, Part of the Bargain and Self-Evident “‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust,’ T. S. Eliot warns his reader in The Wasteland. Brady Petersen’s Dust is haunted by Eliot from the title onward. His poems pose the overwhelming Can we recover from loss and grief, the burial of our dead? Is the world charged with the grandeur of God? Or are the signs the poet sees ‘hollow omens,’ his poems mere ‘muttered incantations against the chill’? Petersen’s poems look hard at what’s hard to look at—a school shooting, a murdered stranger, a beloved daughter’s death—and they do not flinch. But Dust is not just a litany of loss—though it is that, and movingly so. Petersen’s poems, by their very being, refuse to let death have the last word. ‘O taste and see,’ each poem sings, in the blunt face of ‘Here is love in a handful of Dust.’~ Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Lovers’ Almanac“Reading Dust, Brady Peterson’s impressive new poetry collection, provides pleasures one usually only finds listening to a soundtrack unfurl from the dashboard of your car on a long road trip. The poems give us a voice to identify with, a kind, wry, clear-eyed American voice that exudes solitude while always reaching out with empathy to understand the people and situations that crowd these poems. The landscape provides the backbeat and sometimes takes a solo—the eponymous dust of Texas, the droughts and rain and frost, bare trees, dirt roads, blue water, plowed fields, crows, hawks, and turkey vultures, daughters, wives, and brothers. It is a hard world, morally and visually, to wrest meaning from, to feel like you matter in, but the pleasure of the collection is watching Brady Peterson try again and again, with good faith and a fresh cup of coffee, to do just that.”~ Constance Squires, Oklahoma Book Award winning author of Along the Watchtower

Genres: Poetry

133 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 25, 2015

Reviews

[Traci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this collection, I'm reminded to be appreciative of good cups of coffee and "ordinary" moments. While I'm not knowledgeable enough to get all the references, I found the poems evocative, triggering a chuckle here and there, as well as a few tears & plenty of nostalgia.

Life is hard & full of loss, but these poems affirm the importance of savoring things like coffee, smiles from pretty girls, and all of the moments that make up a life.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brady Peterson’s latest collection, “Dust” (Big Table, 2015), showcases some of the poet’s strongest work to date. Gifted like Seamus Heaney with the uncanny ability to transform everyday reality and language into hints at transcendence, Peterson continues to explore favorite subjects and themes — coffee and Tuesdays, the inscrutable nature of youth and death, the slow entropic aftermath of war.

His poems are slivers of life that, laid one atop the next, build up to shivery and bittersweet epiphanies. Some of my favorites were the harrowing “Angel;” “What We Have,” in which coffee’s role as inadequate sacrament is explored; “Moloch,” with its indictment of the Beats; “Being,” with its hints at natural mindlessness; the failed insight of “A Refrain;” and the bittersweet nostalgia of “Holding Still.”

[D.A. Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brady Peterson's collection offers proof that there are no small moments. Sipping coffee, working, eating, dreaming or remembering -- each activity offers an entry point into a spiritual place, where our memories of experiences as different as old relationships, past wars, or world events are waiting for something in the here and now to pull them to the surface. A great example of what it means to be alive and always paying attention to those voices around you.

[Vickie Farmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought Provoked

Brady Peterson has the gift of changing mere words into a life, a life that opens our hearts and, for some, our souls.