From the sleepy college town of St. Peter, Minnesota, Philip S. Bryant once again shares with us a wide range of impressions, images, and rhythms. On one page he's appreciating delicate lines across new-fallen snow, and on the next he's reassessing the Battle of the Little Bighorn or offering up a prayer for the NRA. Time and again he succeeds in bringing the historical, political, and natural worlds together in surprising ways. He can transform rage into lyricism without undercutting the significance of the injustices involved, and he can instill evidently mundane experiences—the song of a goldfinch or the appearance of a spring ephemeral—with cosmic significance. Baseball, campfire smoke, intelligent design, a farm repair sign along the highway, there's no telling what theme will command his attention next, and that's half the fun.
What's the true meaning of a liberal arts education? In Bryant's view, it's "Just Soul," and soul abounds in these challenging and delightful lyrics.
Philip S. Bryant, a native of Chicago, is the author of four previous collections of poetry, Blue Island, Sermon on a Perfect Spring Day, Stompin' at the Grand Terrace: a jazz memoir in verse, with music by Carolyn Wilkins, and The Promised Land. His work has appeared in Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota; Good Poems, American Places, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor; and Where One Voice Ends Another Begins: 150 Years of Minnesota Poetry. Sermon on a Perfect Spring Day was nominated for a Forward Prize and was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in poetry. Selections from Stompin' at the Grand Terrace were chosen by Los Angeles Times music critic Ann Powers to appear in Best Music Writing, 2010. The Promised Land was a Silver Medal finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award given by the Independent Book Publishers Association. He was a fellow of the Minnesota State Arts Board in 1992 and 1998, and has served on the governing board of the Loft, the premier literary arts center in the Twin Cities. He has worked with the Givens Foundation as a mentor for emerging African American writers. He was a radio-essayist for Minnesota Public Radio, and is currently a professor emeritus at Gustavus Adolphus College. He lives with his wife, Renée, in St. Peter, Minnesota.
"Bryant's work for a half-century now has served as a kind of social, historical, spiritual, and geo-culturally singular lighthouse for far-flung, weary travelers lost amid an America haunted by its own blood and tears, hollered innuendos, sweaty shadows, and unspeakable beauty. To commune with these poems is to sit with a soul vigilantly yet 'quietly making/Good on that great debt/Owed to all beauty/Rounded off to the/Very last decimal point. . .' The elegiac tenor singing in this lifelong practice of poetry harmonizes almost clandestinely with the timeless, world-weary symphony of the Poet in Exile—therein increasing its interior dimensions and boundaries." - Ed Bok Lee, Author of Whorled
"Philip Bryant devotes equal attention to the smallest—the fox sparrow and campfire smoke—and the largest—America and planet Earth—since all are equally worthy and all bring their 'curious and mysterious' messages to us. There's an abiding soul in these big-hearted and hopeful poems. They remind us to 'carry our burdens' with ease and joy." - Athena Kildegaard
"Philip Bryant's exquisite collection is a love letter to place itself. Each poem travels across eons to deliver a deeply reflective message, and in receiving them, we, too, come face to face with mortality and with memory. These poems traverse shifting landscapes of love and loss, bridging divides from Chicago to rural Saint Peter, Minnesota, as they ask 'What better place is there / On the entire earth, to catch a clear, fast-fading glimpse, of both Time and eternity?' "- Rebecca T. Fremo, Author of Moving the Body
