Navigating the Distances: Poems New and Selected [Hardcover]

Bruce Bennett (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

If you begin in the middle of Bennett's retrospective collection, you may think him a relic of the early twentieth century. For here are couplets, quatrains, and lots of villanelles, those exquisite exercises in repeated rhymes and lines. What's more, these poems are epigrammatic and humorous, as traditionally they should be. They aren't old-fashioned, however, except perhaps in dealing with life issues that are timeless; their diction and nuances are contemporary. In the book's first two sections, Bennett is just as wry and amusing in more conventionally contemporary short-lined free verses and prose poems. So start at the book's beginning, and read it through. Bennett at first often seems like Kahlil Gibran come to his senses or Stephen Crane (as poet) grown older and mellower, especially in the set of poems about love, "I Never Danced with Mary Beth." After such refreshing stuff, many formal poems in the later sections come over like Robert Frost in aphoristic mode. And then there are the parodies, beginning with one of Frost: "I'm going out to mash a slug or two . . . You come too" --outrageous! Okay, Bennett writes light verse. But it isn't "lite" --it's rich. Ray Olson

Product Details

• Hardcover: 178 pages
• Publisher: Orchises Pr (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0914061798
• ISBN-13: 978-0914061793
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,016,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Shall I compare Thee, February 6, 2001

By 

Holli Braun (Naples, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Navigating the Distances: Poems New and Selected (Hardcover)

Bruce Bennett was my professor at Wells College. He was great then as he is now. If you like poetry with a twist, you'll love Bruce's unique style.

4.0 out of 5 stars Helps Set Your Poetic Compass!, January 3, 2001

By 

B.D. (Rancho San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Navigating the Distances: Poems New and Selected (Hardcover)

If you are interested in reading or crafting villanelles, sonnets, epigrams and other fixed forms of metered, rhyming verse, you've come to the right place. The villanelles are especially well done, found in a separate booklet called It's Hard to Get the Angle Right. Great combination of wit, impassioned poetics, irony, cogent reasoning, mastery of fixed form and sheer entertainment value. Not all poems are of equal value, thus the 4-star rating. Perhaps in future editions or a Collected Poems volume, many of the lesser, triter verse can be forgettably omitted; but much that remains is more than collectible, as W.H.Auden said, the one-quarter portion of his work for which he is truly grateful.