Selected Poems

Summary

In 1982 William Bronk won the American Book Award for his book Life Supports: New & Collected Poems. Since then, he has written seven additional books, and Sagetrieb has devoted an entire issue to his work. Bronk is unquestionably a major poet––utterly original, uncompromisingly abstract in content, and deeply sensuous in form. Michael Heller, in The New York Times Book Review, said Bronk’s poetry is “singularly persistent in its own investigation of how our deepest truths are those which are most unsayable.” This volume spans Bronk’s entire career, from his first book Light and Dark, to his most recent Some Words and The Mild Day (Talisman), which the Village Voice praised as “offering epigrammatic style, philosophical reverie, and haiku-like concision.” Selected Poems is an indispensable collection, containing the most compelling and the most popular of Bronk’s eloquent poems.

Preface
Benediette Omnia Opera	p. 1
The Mind's Landscape on an Early Winter Day	p. 2
The Arts and Death: A Fugue for Sidney Cox	p. 3
A Vase of Various Flowers	p. 5
We Want the Mark of Time	p. 6
At Tikal	p. 7
Blue Spruces in Pairs, a Bird Bath Between	p. 8
The Annihilation of Matter	p. 9
Metonymy as an Approach to a Real World	p. 10
Truth as a Far Country, as a Piteous Ogre	p. 11
The Night Watch	p. 13
Not My Loneliness, But Ours	p. 14
Virgin and Child With Music and Numbers	p. 15
The Outer Becoming Inner	p. 16
Certain Beasts, Like Cats	p. 17
The Summer Airs	p. 18
Aspects of the World Like Coral Reefs	p. 19
La Cama de Piedra	p. 20
Tenochtitlan	p. 21
The Nature of Musical Form	p. 22
Go Ahead; Goodbye; Good Luck; and Watch Out	p. 23
Corals and Shells	p. 24
Of the All With Which We Coexist	p. 25
Not to Cry Out, "How Long, Oh Lord, How Long"	p. 26
The Stairs at Korcula	p. 27
On Credo Ut Intelligam	p. 28
The Body of This Life	p. 30
That Something There Is Should Be	p. 31
The Abnegation	p. 32
The Incarnation	p. 33
Civitas Dei	p. 34
The Mask the Wearer of the Mask Wears	p. 35
The Sense of Passage	p. 36
The Mind's Limitations Are Its Freedom	p. 37
The Ignorant Lust After Knowledge	p. 38
Beatific Effigies	p. 39
Silence, Emptiness	p. 40
Paradise Now and Then	p. 41
The Basic Wonder	p. 42
The Real World	p. 43
To Praise the Music	p. 44
About Dynamism, Desire and Various Fictions	p. 45
The Limits of Knowledge	p. 46
The Abjuration Avowed	p. 47
Put	p. 48
The Elusions of Desire	p. 49
The Touch	p. 50
The Non-Lying of Figures	p. 51
The Contention	p. 51
The Emptiness of Human Being	p. 52
The Tell	p. 53
The Natural Sciences	p. 53
Ontology Offers a Hindrance to Humanism	p. 54
The Passage	p. 55
The World	p. 55
What You Can Do	p. 56
Like an Island Downriver From Us	p. 56
The Intended Taste	p. 57
The Lullaby	p. 57
Succoth	p. 58
Life Supports	p. 59
Unsatisfied Desire	p. 60
The Destroyer Life	p. 61
Questions for Eros	p. 62
Poem for the Nineteenth of March, St. Joseph's Day	p. 63
Weathers We Live In	p. 64
Evaluation	p. 65
The Wants of Life	p. 66
The Rumination of Rivers	p. 67
Careless Love	p. 68
Winter Vocative	p. 69
Your Way Too	p. 70
Deaf Beethoven	p. 71
Frailty	p. 72
Courtly Love	p. 73
Living Instead	p. 73
The Look Back	p. 74
Old Testament	p. 74
I Am	p. 75
Insynthetic	p. 75
Forget It	p. 76
Sixth Day	p. 76
The Writer	p. 77
Left Alone	p. 78
Who's There	p. 79
Easy Virtue	p. 79
The Seeing Eye	p. 80
Morning	p. 80
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