The Throats of Narcissus

Bruce Bond

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.

"This book avows that Bruce Bond is a good man making poems of a high and vital order."

—Donald Revell, author of There Are 3: Poems

5.5"x8.5", 88 pages
$16.00 paper
1-55728-706-6

Bruce Bond is director of creative writing and an associate professor of English at the University of North Texas. He is the author of three previously published books, Independence Days (1990, Woodley Press), The Anteroom of Paradise (1991, Quarterly Review of Literature), and Radiography (1997, EOA Editions).