The Anteroom of Paradise

Poetry. "When some fifteen years ago I first heard Bruce Bond read his poems at the University of Kansas, I knew that he was the real thing, destined to become one of the more important poets of his generation. Since then he has authored five full-length books of poems, each one advancing the cause of the poetic imagination and the reaches of language a little farther, a bit higher. And so I am grateful to Silverfish Review Press for reissuing his second book, THE ANTEROOM OF PARADISE, highly valuable in its own right for its lyric precision and grace, finely honed lines, and rich verbal textures. A musician as well as a poet, Bond has never abandoned--as so many poets have--the powers of the auditory imagination that so animate ANTEROOM. Rereading it, I recall the pleasures of the large second section on composers, the way it makes poetry seem like the only possible means of articulating a life in music. SILVERFISH has reopened the door to THE ANTEROOM OF PARADISE, and I hope others will enter it to witness and delight in the evolving gifts of one of our finest poets"-- B. H. Fairchild.