Facing the Music: Poems

by Bruce Berger

Music in Bruce Berger's poetry is more than subject matter, more than cadence; it is a metaphor for the examined life. A man's transformations are measured by the concerts he has witnessed. The depth of a woman's life is revealed by an unfinished painting that her son attempts to complete. A composer is gauged by his silences.
Syncopating his measures, using poetic forms for their liberating sense of play, Berger makes music of the lives of a worker on a computerized assembly line, the developer of quark theory, and a father whose single remaining pleasure is crossword puzzles. Turning wordplay on such unpoetic subjects as practice rooms, embryo transplants, and money, Berger springs secrets from our uninspected commonplaces.

46 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995