Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (Poets On Poetry)

In these essays, Bruce Bond interrogates the commonly accepted notion that all poetry since modernism tends toward one of two traditions: that of a more architectural sensibility with its resistance to metaphysics, and that of a latter-day Romantic sensibility, which finds its authority in a metaphysics authenticated by the individual imagination. Poetry, whether self-consciously or not, has always thrived on the paradox of the distant in the immanent and the other in the self; as such, it is driven by both a metaphysical hunger and a resistance to metaphysical certainty. Hidden resources of being animate the language of the near, just as near things beckon from an elusive and inarticulate distance. Bond revalidates the role of poetry and, more broadly, of the poetic imagination as both models for and embodiments of a transfigurative process, an imperfectly mimetic yet ontological engendering of consciousness at the limits of a language that must—if cognizant of its psychological, ethical, and epistemological summons—honor that which lies beyond it.

Literature & Fiction

Bond, Bruce

History & Criticism

University of Michigan Press

<div> <div>In these essays, Bruce Bond interrogates the commonly accepted notion that all poetry since modernism tends toward one of two traditions: that of a more architectural sensibility with its resistance to metaphysics, and that of a latter-day Romantic sensibility, which finds its authority in a metaphysics authenticated by the individual imagination. Poetry, whether self-consciously or not, has always thrived on the paradox of the distant in the immanent and the other in the self; as such, it is driven by both a metaphysical hunger and a resistance to metaphysical certainty. Hidden resources of being animate the language of the near, just as near things beckon from an elusive and inarticulate distance. Bond revalidates the role of poetry and, more broadly, of the poetic imagination as both models for and embodiments of a transfigurative process, an imperfectly mimetic yet ontological engendering of consciousness at the limits of a language that must--if cognizant of its psychological, ethical, and epistemological summons--honor that which lies beyond it.</div> </div>

For the Lost Cathedral delves deeply into the human relationship with the divine and its capacity for empathy, transformation, and the tolerance of difference and doubt. Bruce Bond seeks neither to praise nor to attack institutional religions, instead choosing to explore their interactions with the inner lives of those who hold them sacred. Faith can offer comfort and security in difficult times, yet it may also create the temptation to hold to absolutes. For the Lost Cathedral examines the tensions inherent in spiritual devotion as well as the impact of such devotion on our most defining conflicts, creativities, and acts of sacrifice. 
In poems whose formal simplicity belies the depth of their complexity and insight, Bond explores a dialogue between the spiritual and the religious. A tour de force of emotional truth and focus, For the Lost Cathedral embodies a spirit of wonder in the face of difficulties that might otherwise appear intractable.

For the Lost Cathedral: Poems (Sea Cliff Fund)

Poetry

LSU Press

Blackout Starlight brings together a selection of poems from nine previously published books, along with a generous assortment of new work. At the heart of this collection are investigations of the role of eros, language, and creative life, and of the wonder and anxiety of their absence. In Bond’s telling, the lines between real and unreal, living and dead, blur together in the poet’s imagination, casting an equally compassionate eye upon “the man we see writhing in the marble” of an uncarved statue and the son at a funeral trying to face “the other half of life, the part / without my father in it.” Taken together, the selections in this book represent the highlights of a dazzling career in poetry and leave the reader eager for many more years of Bond’s verses to come.

Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems, 1997-2015

In Invention of the Wilderness, Bruce Bond explores the wilderness as a spiritual, psychological, and ecological realm―a territory that, depending on our tolerances and affections, calls out for order, exploitation, expansion, or preservation. Although to talk of “inventing” the wilderness seems paradoxical, the book seeks to reclaim the etymological root of “invention” as a “venturing in.” To invent a wilderness is to go inward by way of attentive engagement in the natural world, to affirm and liberate imaginative expression as no mere mirror of nature, but a force of it. At times meditative and melancholic, though also vibrant and full of life, Invention of the Wilderness proposes an embodied and reflective way of being in the world.

Invention of the Wilderness: Poems

In his collection Gold Bee, Bruce Bond takes his cue from Wallace Stevens’s Harmonium, bringing a finely honed talent to classic poetic questions concerning music, the march of progress, and the relationship between reality and the imagination. Blending humor and pathos, Bond examines the absurdities of contemporary life: “The modern air so full of phantom wires, / hard to tell the connected from the confused / who yak out loud to their beleaguered angels.” At other times, his intricately crafted lyrics weave together myth and history to explore the various roles music and art play in the human experience, as when Bond’s poems meditate on Orphean themes, descending to the underworld of loneliness, commercialism, or death and emerging with hard (and hard-won) truths. Addressing broadly ranging topics—from a retelling of the story of Artephius, the fabled father of alchemy, to a meditation on a fashion ad’s wind machine—Bond’s voice is always penetrating in its examination, yet wondering in the face of beauty, conjuring for the reader a world where music has “the power / to move stones, not far, but far enough.”

Gold Bee (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry)

Southern Illinois University Press

Describes typical autumn activities and explains how we know when fall has arrived

Autumn (Beginning to Learn About)

Krull, Kathleen

Allington, Richard L.

Children's Books

Heinemann/Raintree

Passing the Literacy Skills Test (Achieving QTS Series)

All trainees working towards Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) must pass a computerized literacy skills test. The test is designed to ensure they have a sound grasp of literacy skills such as spelling, punctuation and grammar and can apply these in practice. This book outlines all of the test requirements and the essential subject knowledge. This Third Edition is updated throughout and now includes a full practice test. Fully revised and updated by one of the authors of the actual skills test, from the Alphaplus Consultancy, this text is an accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive practice tool for the literacy skills test.

Education & Teaching

Johnson, Jim

Schools & Teaching

Learning Matters

“With the luminous precision of music, Bruce Bond has crafted, in Cinder, a generous and urgent collection of poems, a work that celebrates the human condition and terrifies us with it in equal measure. The result is a book of poems weighted with dark vision, set loose. Bruce Bond is one of our generation’s best poets, and this is his best book.”—Laura Kasischke

Cinder

Etruscan Press

“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 life: 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. HixIn 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 reachof architecture that rises out of the smolderand back, even the legs of the arc that returnthe 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.

Peal: poems

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bond, Bruce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bond, Bruce

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bond, Bruce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (Poets On Poetry)

Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (Poets On Poetry)

For the Lost Cathedral: Poems (Sea Cliff Fund)

Blackout Starlight: New and Selected Poems, 1997-2015

Invention of the Wilderness: Poems

Gold Bee (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry)

Autumn (Beginning to Learn About)

Passing the Literacy Skills Test (Achieving QTS Series)

Cinder

Peal: poems