In Bruce Bond’s fourth full-length book, The Throats of Narcissus, the myth of Narcissus finds its transfiguring mirror in poems of a contemporary world, a world rendered precarious by literal and metaphysical famine, by the blood of fathers and distant strangers, the charred relics of foreign wars and nearer fires as well—a world wrestling with problems of its own self-regard and the consequent spiritual longing for personal communion and creative transformation. Thus the myth of Narcissus resonates not only as a story of self-absorption and demise, but also of life-affirming metamorphosis. As a result, we see not only poems concerning childhood and the dawn of guilt, desire, and self-awareness, but also poems featuring jazz figures of the fifties and sixties, heroes of creative discipline and play who dealt musically with their own narcissistic wounds and addictions, leaving a generous legacy of pleasures, however rebellious and private their roots.
The Throats of Narcissus
$19.95
Bruce Bond
978-1-55728-706-9 (paper)
July 2001
“This is a collection of imaginative range and daring, of inventiveness and exactness of imagery and language dedicated to themes of recognition, astonishment, harmony. . . . an impressive [talent].”
—W. S. Merwin
“In every line—literally, in every line—of The Throats of Narcissus, beauties constellate and beauties choir. That is the miracle here. Imagery sings, and music radiates a bright clear light. The poems strive to balance the indifferent equations of mortality with true art. That they so consistently succeed delights me. And that they are, in such fundamental ways, committed to justice, elates me. This book avows that Bruce Bond is a good man making poems of a high and vital order.”
—Donald Revell