( 1 reviews )
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( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Mar 17 1999
In his poem,"The Young Husband", Bill Bauer remarks,"You must go and find that place and be there./It may be a day, or year, or many years." These poems take us there. They visit a day and often capture that day for Bill Bauer, but also for us. That day may not be the same day for us..but it is close enough to stimulate recall and understanding of a similar day lodged tightly in our own memory.These poems frame places and years that are hauntingly familiar. They develop the demographics of promise through poems as diverse as "Fragment of a Letter" which captures the promise that "all the short timers say/they will write when they get home./They never do,..." or, from the poem " For Old Girlfiends" a father looks at promises "A man never suffers the depths of his own cruelty/until his daughter recognizes him for the first time."This collection of poetry wipes the dust from the table of promises that has been used to serve the future to many generations. The craftsmanship of the author leaves the table clear and allows the reader to see through the dust into similar moments. Clear, sharp, moments summed up so well in poem after poem, remind us, as Bill Bauer says so well in his poem "The Pigeons of Chernoble"; "Each generation/fantasy birds visit earth./Mozart knew them,/so did Freud." These promises belong to every generation. Bill Bauer has captured them for those who have buried the promises in the dust. He has also captured them for those who will have their own to bury in the future.
