#brucewillard

Violent Blues, along with our other Fall 2016 titles, is now available from Four Way Books!

A poem from Bruce Willard's Violent Blues:

"Revision" Mid-February revealed in red: correction, cardinal, blister, rose, store-front heart, snow sunset, scarlet lingerie on white skin. Lone bonsai, indoors, ever- green edged in rust, its limbs overreaching its given space. Time for pruning. Here, close to the branches, the quick, turned joinery and excess. How seasoned these bloodless cuts, these short and blessed days. "Revision" from Violent Blues (c) 2016 by Bruce Willard. Appears with permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.

Praise for Bruce Willard

“Willard plays the notes in-between—the awakenings, loves and losses, the slippages between two blurred bodies of life, of sending and receiving—that is, the 'un-understandable,' perhaps like Thelonius Monk's fractured piano, the one that flames in the center of being, meaning and enlightenment. This is also a mouth-held blues harp of words, ultimately not made of words, it is more an 'alluring paleness,' a riff of life-death's 'impossible finishes,' a streaked-night asphalt. I am struck by the sincerity of the voice here, the relentless set of mind-heart puzzles, the tender, wisdom-lit aloneness in this collection. Each poem, in a way, is a deep breath koan that musics-in-out from sea depths, dream echoes—the 'pressure' of existence and non-being—yet all is alive as cherimoya, jacaranda, and jasmine. This is a rare gift, a magnificent wave of poems that will move with you forever.” 

 — Juan Felipe Herrera, United States Poet Laureate 

“Most readers will admire those poems in Bruce Willard's Violent Blues whose vanishing points lead back to the unabated joy of self-reflection and the endlessly beautiful sound of modern life suddenly cast in light. Yet, these blue notes are singular and honor the earned truths of marriage and fathering, and name one’s errors with a poignant dignity. To which I say, snap your fingers, close your eyes, and nod along to its exquisite and pitch perfect lyric moods.” 

 — Major Jackson

“I read Violent Blues with great pleasure. Then I read it again with even more. Its poems are vivid and surprising. A trampoline can become a metaphor for the rhythm of our lives. [Willard’s] poems have a fine haptic quality—made of things real and things imagined to make them even more real. They find their way in the course of their unfolding and make their own fine music as they go.” 

 — Dan Gerber

Click here to buy your copy of Violent Blues!

Upcoming Readings for Bruce Willard

Tuesday, Oct. 11, 6 PM - Bruce Willard with forthcoming Four Way Books authors Christina Pugh and Valerie Wallace at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore on 5751 S Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL.

Today, Wednesday, April 15, at 5:30 pm, Bruce Willard (Holding Ground) will read at Vail Public Library (292 West Meadow Drive) in Vail, CO to celebrate National Poetry Month. 

This Wednesday, April 15, at 5:30 pm, Bruce Willard (Holding Ground) will read at Vail Public Library (292 West Meadow Drive) in Vail, CO to celebrate National Poetry Month.

"A recurring theme is our inability to fully communicate. It is ironic, yet fully appropriate, to use poetry, the most open-ended literary form, to demonstrate how difficult it can be to say what you mean. It is especially appropriate here, where Willard uses a bare minimum of words to make his points. The line, 'All day I have been trying to say something/ about something without talking/ about the thing itself' from 'Intimate,' could be a definition of poetry." Read the full review of Holding Ground by Bruce Willard, written by C. Murray Thomas for Poetix, here. 

Holding Ground is available from Four Way Books. 

To read a poem, "Elegy for the Stepfather", by Bruce Willard (Holding Ground) in the Portland Press Herald, click here.

Friday, October 25, at 6:45 pm, Bruce Willard (Holding Ground) will read at the City University of Hong Kong in the Creative Media Center Room M5050.