Crucible Crucible
ISBN: , SKU: , AUTHOR: Bosch, Daniel, PUBLISHER: Handsel Books, Crucible is a collection of ong>poemong>s by award-winning poet Daniel Bosch. The ong>poemong>s break easily into two sections. In the first, a set of ironic, emulative "Homages & Elegies," Bosch playfully apostrophizes ong>poetsong> living and dead, as if it took two not only to tango, but to write a ong>poemong>. He wrestles with Dickinson, grooves with the glacial wit of Frost (belatedly), waltzes with Walcott's ghost (prematurely), mimics Mandelstam, picks apples with Sappho, and shares a transcontinental flight with Brodsky. Each ong>poemong> is carefully measured; some are composed by meticulous inversion of their precursor's poetic strategy. Literary but by no means prudish, these ong>poemong>s look back-and forward-to a time when ong>poemong>s took stands readers could understand, disagree with, and laugh at. The result is a sort of hypertext essay on what it means to pour oneself into the mold of "poet" in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The second half of Crucible is "Passion Fruit," a fourteen-ong>poemong> "sonnet" that courts a single muse through incarnations as various as "Orange," "Peach," "Banana," "Cherries," "Blueberries," and "Mango." Part love ong>poemong>, part meditation on physical longing and memory, "Passion Fruit" celebrates the eye's brief glimpses of beauty in ong>poemong>s frank, funny, and joyful. "I admire Daniel Bosch's Crucible very much for its inventiveness and vitality and the enviable skill of its execution. Every ong>poemong> feels alive, and though they're often 'homages' to other writers, and 'after' other writers, the book is crackling throughout with an individual personality." -David Ferry