4:The end of the story is a car abandoned by the Golden Gatebut once in the black pool that drowned the hours alivethere was no end there was a man who brooded over the keyshis baby grand afloat the water a whisper without caller or calledI want to say the wound goes deeper each end has anotherlet death wait we have another pressing matters ask the crythat brought us into the world ask the tiny circle inside us allwhere none of it matters but still you cry you play your loveballad to an empty room rings of smoke blow over the sandsof the Presidio black bile runs in a keyboard’s hands surprise remember the bus north of harbor how it stopped in the woodsto let the black bear cross and everyone looked at each otheryou me crow bear powerless and still before the eyes of strangers :4The poem creates the distance it must cross? Yes, it does.Makes itself a bridge above the dark hours? Yes.And you’re telling that broken water rises? I am.And some pleasure whispers on the surface? That’s right.A wound works its way through me, mouth to anus? It’s true.Matter teaches me to sing by singing in the emptiness. Yes it does.The world is a circle inside us all? So it’s been said.The poem creates a circle around all it loves? Yes.But leaves me out, smoke in an empty room? That’s right.Black bile turns the soul melancholy? According to the books.I don’t remember reading any books. You’ve read many.I remember a black bear standing up by the side of the road. Yes.And a bridge across which all grew stranger. Yes, stranger. That’s this bridge.
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- January 2, 2024
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“4:” and “:4″from THERAPON: by Bruce Bond and Dan Beachy-Quick.
Published by Tupelo Press December 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Bruce Bond and Dan Beachy-Quick.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Bruce Bond is the author of 35 books including, most recently, Patmos (Juniper Prize, UMass, 2021), Behemoth (New Criterion Prize, 2021), Liberation of Dissonance (Schaffner Award for Literature in Music, Schaffner, 2022), Choreomania (MadHat, 2023), and Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), plus two books of criticism Immanent Distance (UMI, 2015) and Plurality and the Poetics of Self (Palgrave, 2019).
Dan Beachy-Quick is a poet, essayist, and translator. His work has been supported by the Monfort, Lannan, and Guggenheim Foundations. He teaches at Colorado University where he is a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar.
“Therapon is an exquisitely composed collaboration between Dan Beachy-Quick and Bruce Bond, a continuous thread of 12-13 line poems that defy any attempt at knowing who wrote what. Therapon is a journey, a song, a looping narrative, an exploration into spirit and word, and it exposes all our failures to find peace and redemption. Etymologically, ‘therapon’ means ‘chamber’ in Ancient Greek. It also means a person whose job/role is an attendant, a companion of lower rank, an aid, a slave, a servant who has committed (or was committed) to be willing to sacrifice all for a human master or supernatural deity. One thinks of The Iliad, one thinks of the global history of slavery, and one thinks of how horribly religion and dogma have failed us, and how fiercely the yearning for a spiritual life lives on. One thinks of how ‘therapy’ derives, also, from the roots of ‘therapon,’ and then one becomes very sad, and a bit bemused. Therapon is also an examination of how language is inadequate to the human and the human spirit. A mature, serious work, Therapon reminds us that humans are beasts capable of immense violence. Why can’t we evolve? And yet, like the animals, we also love, we also seek.”
—Gillian Conoley
“This maze of poem we are led through—or not led, encouraged through—offers many threads to follow: ‘one day a needle drags a filament / that in time dissolves like a sun on its passage.’ That two authors can so coordinate their views of a world as to produce such lovely lyricism is itself a wonder, but that the resulting vision becomes, as binocular viewing always engenders, both multi-dimensional and convincing, is a continual gift continually opening before us. More than therapeutic, the book is a delight and a discovery.”
—Bin Ramke, author of Earth on Earth
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