Bronk

Reading for this book, toward this book. Rereading for this book, toward this book. Yet again out the front door to the garage-library to scan bookcases, see what catches the eye.

The poetry shelves. Death Is the Place. My right hand reaches for it, brings it down.

William Bronk’s very short poems, many just a few lines. On page four, more than forty years ago I’d underlined “dawn’s confidence astonishes.” And, on page forty-two, poet referring to the world, I’d underlined “The much / I may have loved in it wasn’t mine.”

I encountered Death Is the Place because, way back when, North Point Press was near my cottage. What a list editor-in-chief Jack Shoemaker and publisher William Turnbull were creating! Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime and Joubert’s Notebooks among the titles I savored, learned from.

I was in my midthirties, eagerly reading as much and as widely as I could. Finally beginning to define myself as a writer, as opposed to being the fellow who’d published several books. So many different paths still possible, so much to love—and to fear missing, or losing—in the world Bronk illuminated when he wrote that it “wasn’t mine.”