Signs and Abominations

by Bruce Beasley

Analyzes the relationship between art and religion through a series of poems by such diverse voices as Emily Dickinson, Flannery O'Connor, and Michelangelo.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published November 27, 2000

Reviews

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bradley’s MO is not unlike that of many of his peers: fairly lean, sometimes disjunctive prose broken into generally non-metrical lines. But his frequent subject—religion and the spiritual life instead of life as a suburban parent and partner or as a creative writing professor—makes his content broader and mostly less solipsistic than the norm.

[Stephen Lamb · Rating 4 out of 5]

K

By the boathouse's
crumbled pylons,
starfish wallow in low runnels of surf–

when I jab them
with a stick, they clutch it

to their nubbed bodies, trying to take it in...

So the numinous
closes around whatever
phenomena happen to stab it,

and clutches,
piece by piece of its star.