“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' 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' or Yeats' '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 .
Author
Bruce 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.
