Review
"Out of his whole career of unswerving devotion to poetry, Gibbons Ruark has distilled a book both rich and rare. Ruark is a master musician; our common language, his instrument. How often he reaches out for the ineffable; how often he succeeds in grasping it. You would have to sift through the life's work of a great many poets to find another hundred pages nearly as fine as these." -- X. J. Kennedy
"This brilliant and beautiful book -- the work of thirty years -- firmly establishes Gibbons Ruark's important place in American poetry. In its sensuality, craft, force, and intelligence, PASSING THROUGH CUSTOMS reacquaints the reader with what has been too often lost to contemporary poetry -- the ceremony and music of the occasion. Ruark is the sage 'singing-master' that Yeats imagined inhabiting Byzantium, compelled to reveal 'what is past, or passing, or to come.' Without fail, his poems give exquisite pleasure." -- Elizabeth Spires
"This brilliant and beautiful book -- the work of thirty years -- firmly establishes Gibbons Ruark's important place in American poetry. In its sensuality, craft, force, and intelligence, PASSING THROUGH CUSTOMS reacquaints the reader with what has been too often lost to contemporary poetry -- the ceremony and music of the occasion. Ruark is the sage 'singing-master' that Yeats imagined inhabiting Byzantium, compelled to reveal 'what is past, or passing, or to come.' Without fail, his poems give exquisite pleasure." -- Elizabeth Spires
