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Peal: poems
“The poems in Bruce Bond 's new collection Peal probe music's deepest sources. These beautifully crafted lyrics lead us down into intricate and sonoruous paths where we meet out own uncertain songs, at once ghostly, elegiac, and ecstatic. This is a work of exquisite complexity by one of our best poets writing today.”— Molly Bendall “The speculative drive of these poems pushes the reader to the very limits of reflection.”— Daniel Tiffany “Poets have ever sought a seamless integration of art and think of Keats's 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' or Yeats's 'How can we know the dancer from the dance?' In Bruce Bond 's Peal , as in the work of this best predecessors, 'it is impossible to know/where music ends, the world begins.'”— H.L. Hix In Bruce Bond 's seventh book, we see a sustained exploration of mortality and its embodiment in the consolations of beauty, most notably in music. As if even the respite of song is action,
its silence no less. Even the bend and reach
of architecture that rises out of the smolder
and back, even the legs of the arc that return
the way the sun returns to a black well,
its trespass quiet, slow, a ghost, a coin,
a wish gone deep as the day grows old. Bruce Bond teaches at the University of North Texas and is poetry editor for American Literary Review .
its silence no less. Even the bend and reach
of architecture that rises out of the smolder
and back, even the legs of the arc that return
the way the sun returns to a black well,
its trespass quiet, slow, a ghost, a coin,
a wish gone deep as the day grows old. Bruce Bond teaches at the University of North Texas and is poetry editor for American Literary Review .
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2009
About the author
Bruce Bond
69 books12 followersBruce Bond is the author of eight previous books of poetry including, most recently, Choir of the Wells (Etruscan Press, 2012), The Visible (LSU, 2012), Peal (Etruscan, 2009), and Blind Rain (Finalist, The Poets Prize; LSU, 2008).
After receiving degrees in English from Pomona College and Claremont Graduate School, Bruce Bond earned his MA in Music Performance from Lamont School of Music. For several years then he worked as a classical and jazz musician in Colorado, after which he went on to receive his PhD in English from the University of Denver. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, Raritan, The New Republic, The Virginia Quarterly, Poetry, and many other journals, and he has received numerous honors including fellowships from the NEA, Texas Commission on the Arts, The Institute for the Advancement of the Arts, and other organizations. Presently he is Regents Professor of English at the University of North Texas and Poetry Editor for American Literary Review.
After receiving degrees in English from Pomona College and Claremont Graduate School, Bruce Bond earned his MA in Music Performance from Lamont School of Music. For several years then he worked as a classical and jazz musician in Colorado, after which he went on to receive his PhD in English from the University of Denver. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, Raritan, The New Republic, The Virginia Quarterly, Poetry, and many other journals, and he has received numerous honors including fellowships from the NEA, Texas Commission on the Arts, The Institute for the Advancement of the Arts, and other organizations. Presently he is Regents Professor of English at the University of North Texas and Poetry Editor for American Literary Review.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 28, 2022
As they loaded the dead onto the gurneys
to wheel them from the university halls,
who could have predicted the startled chirping
in those pockets, the invisible bells
and tiny metal music of the phones,
in each the cheer of a voiceless song.
Pop mostly, Timerlake, Shakira, tunes
never more various now, more young,
shibboleths of what a student hears,
what chimes the dark doorway to the parent
on the line. Who could have answered there
in proxy for the dead, received the panic
with grace, however artless, a live bird
gone still at the meeting of the strangers.
* * *
What is it you forget in your vigil,
cell after cell like petals on the grave
of first days, so often strange, your veil
of skin ruffled, renewed, as if you grieved
in the blind colour of too much light.
So late you sleep there, so leaden the pour
of suns that cannot touch you. The blood you let,
the foaming of the crevice - what old prayer
of needle and thread could ever answer
the power of arrival. The body opens
its red door which in turn opens the flare
of the eye. Don't you remember. You pinned
each to itself like an armless sleeve.
Unlikely, true. White shadow of the wound
that is no wound. The wind in the leaves
and the sound it makes, after the wind.
* * *
And for a time it seemed all music
was the music of my youth,
a pulse I borrowed for my own
strange blood. For a time my dead
friends kept floating to the surface,
their agate eyes wet with sleep.
They have come today, I thought,
to take me out of my body -
expelled or lured, I could not say,
or both, as is the way with songs.
They heave come to trouble the water
of each loss, blur it like a harp,
if only to turn me back to see
what the harp sees, what it tells us,
that the world is too full for words,
too empty for them either,
that we life, if we live, in a rented house
under the sound of leaves.
They too are tongues. Praise,
said the music, thought I remained
a step away, faith on one side,
my shadow on the other, my bones
reinvented themselves again
and again. And for a time day
trailed off like a car radio
gathered deeper into the storm.
The changing sky. It keeps
its promise. This much I know.
Praise, said the radio, its song,
its ghost, its bridal veil of rain.
to wheel them from the university halls,
who could have predicted the startled chirping
in those pockets, the invisible bells
and tiny metal music of the phones,
in each the cheer of a voiceless song.
Pop mostly, Timerlake, Shakira, tunes
never more various now, more young,
shibboleths of what a student hears,
what chimes the dark doorway to the parent
on the line. Who could have answered there
in proxy for the dead, received the panic
with grace, however artless, a live bird
gone still at the meeting of the strangers.
- Ringtone, pg. 17
* * *
What is it you forget in your vigil,
cell after cell like petals on the grave
of first days, so often strange, your veil
of skin ruffled, renewed, as if you grieved
in the blind colour of too much light.
So late you sleep there, so leaden the pour
of suns that cannot touch you. The blood you let,
the foaming of the crevice - what old prayer
of needle and thread could ever answer
the power of arrival. The body opens
its red door which in turn opens the flare
of the eye. Don't you remember. You pinned
each to itself like an armless sleeve.
Unlikely, true. White shadow of the wound
that is no wound. The wind in the leaves
and the sound it makes, after the wind.
- Scar, pg. 37
* * *
And for a time it seemed all music
was the music of my youth,
a pulse I borrowed for my own
strange blood. For a time my dead
friends kept floating to the surface,
their agate eyes wet with sleep.
They have come today, I thought,
to take me out of my body -
expelled or lured, I could not say,
or both, as is the way with songs.
They heave come to trouble the water
of each loss, blur it like a harp,
if only to turn me back to see
what the harp sees, what it tells us,
that the world is too full for words,
too empty for them either,
that we life, if we live, in a rented house
under the sound of leaves.
They too are tongues. Praise,
said the music, thought I remained
a step away, faith on one side,
my shadow on the other, my bones
reinvented themselves again
and again. And for a time day
trailed off like a car radio
gathered deeper into the storm.
The changing sky. It keeps
its promise. This much I know.
Praise, said the radio, its song,
its ghost, its bridal veil of rain.
- White, pg. 67-68
July 13, 2011
Wonderful - the poems in their own right - startling in perspective & extraordinary in language & as a great bonus the poems about music provide a great intro to some of the best music or a new appreciation for old favorites.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews