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Instruments of the Bones
Copyright © 1992
by Stephen C. Behrendt
Mid-List Press
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In Instruments of the Bones, Stephen C. Behrendt
attends to the details of his
immediate world with a keen, focused, and sensitive eye.
His is a natural world
that includes man--a living world that includes death.
Behrendt's meditative
poems unfold quickly in the "Here, now...this glaring spot of time"; but their
roots reach deeply into the past, and their implications stretch
indeterminately into the future.--from the jacket
It's odd and fitting that bones, the only part of our bodies
that persists after death, should become the emblem of our
transitory nature. Instruments of the Bones by Stephen C.
Behrendt includes dozens of richly imagined and affecting
elegies, written not just for people but for a whole spectrum
of creatures great and small. Behrendt knows that love is the
other side of mortality, and in his poetry he gathers up our
lost, wounded, strayed, and fallen. The flute he fashions
from a hollow bone plays unforgettable music.--Emily
Grosholz
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A Step in the Dark
Copyright © 1996
by Stephen C. Behrendt
Mid-List Press
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A Step in the Dark has the rich savor of work aged in
the heart and mind.
Behrendt sees and hears keenly, testifies, and presents
to us the roiling universe of
nature and culture. Passionate and witty, the poems
are recollected in tranquility,
presented with the small measure of detachment that
Wordsworth recommends.
These poems are brilliant and wise, deeply satisfying
and compassionate. I can't
imagine having lived without them.--Hilda Raz
Whether he writes of humans or animals, Stephen Behrendt
feels the Other as an
extension of himself, and this empathy makes his work
profoundly moving. The
poems in A Step in the Dark are not afraid to be
gorgeous, yet Behrendt's eloquence
is free of preening and preciousness. A Step in the Dark
is a gift book, in many
senses of the phrase. Reading it, I experienced a tragic and
compassionate vision of
the world "dignified and lovely in the robes of
mystery."--Alice Fulton
Over 80 years ago, in "The Prose Tradition in Verse,"
Pound wrote of the virtues
of "clarity and precision" he found essential to all good
writing. Readers will find
such virtues in A Step in the Dark.
They will also find a generous inclusive- ness, both
in stance and subject matter, to the available world.
No small accomplishments,
given the self-preoccupations of so much contemporary
work.--Robert Gibb
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What the Critics Say
Bibliography
