On Wed, 5 Apr 2000, Francis M (HaSS) wrote:
> What do you all think of William Bronk? I came across a tiny, very
> impressive poem in something I was reading recently, and thought I must
> investigate. I'd never heard of him - perhaps he is not well known on this
> side of the Atlantic, or it could just be that I haven't been paying
> attention. There turns out to be quite a lot of stuff on the Web, mostly
> criticism rather than poems. He seems like the kind of poet I'm always
> looking for, offbeat but with great ambition and scope. His work isn't in
> the library here, but his Collected Poems are available from Amazon for
> about GBP 10. I'm tempted.
>
Yield to that temptation. Bronk, from what I can tell, didn't publicize
himself very much, just worked his day job and wrote many many incredible
poems when he was working his real job. His essays, called, I think,
_Vectors and Smoothable Curves_ are also worth a look, especially for his
lengthy considerations of 19th C. American writers like Melville and
Thoreau. If I may put in a snide remark here, I would take the "New
Formalists" more seriously if they would promote the work of poets like
Bronk, whose work is more carefully crafted than that of the
Neo-Expansive-Formalistos.
David Zauhar
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