Vanishing Act
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By turns mischievous and passionate, by fits lyrical and foolish, the poems of Vanishing Act map a sustained interrogation of the interior, taking as territory the lyric subject itself. The content derives from daily life, financial worries, washing the dishes, advancing age, but as poems proceed to impasse and insight, shifts in tone, focus, and rhythm transport those concerns. Considered as a whole, Vanishing Act involves the “depth we feel” and “shadow we cast,” the possibility of falling thru one’s self to “the view looking.” While poems play off death as the ultimate vanishing, they also work towards ways of perceiving, in which the preoccupied, twisted logic of interior monologue engages a sometimes higher dialogue.
Bruce Holsapple grew up in rural Maine in the 1950s, edited a small press in Portland, Maine in the 70s, then wandered off (Washington, Vermont, New York, Texas), working a proverbial variety of jobs, before finding his way into central New Mexico. Once there, possibilities of redemption stretched out like a bright desert landscape, sandy wash, lunar hills, cactus, juniper, & steep, stony mountains. He currently lives in Magdalena, NM, kindling a “wobbly little self” & scribbling, scribbling. |