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Soldier's Home

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Guernsey's "Soldier's Home" reminds me of why I lost interest in post-World War II American poetry. His latest collection is almost everything that most American poetry of the last half-century is not. Though intensely personal, the poems are neither self-indulgent navel-gazing, nor celebration of inanities, nor raucous bombast and blather.

The poems' language is New England American: unpretentious, frill-less, at times stark, and always quietly beautiful.

Guernsey's search for his father, the lost old soldier who wandered away from a VA hospital, provides thematic continuity and a sustained metaphor that speaks to any thoughtful person's attempts to answer existential questions that cannot be answered and to recapture what we never had before we lost it.

The soldier's home is not Frost's "place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in," for in the world of these poems, there is finally no "there" there, and there are no "they" to take us in. There is only the search for Thoreau's lost hound, bay horse, and turtle dove, and a few "moment[s] of light in all that dark."

Guernsey's poems are themselves moments of light in all that dark. His work gives me hope that American poetry may yet survive its long Babylonian captivity in "creative writing" programs and departments of English.

"Soldier's Home" is a wonderfully put-together compilation of poetry from accomplished teacher and writer Bruce Guernsey. These poems, many recollections of war-time America during the forties and shortly after, span the poet's entire lifetime while offering glimpses into complex relationships between husbands and wives, fathers and sons (and daughters), soldiers in battle, sanity and insanity, man and nature.

Guernsey's offerings are honest and void of dressy, empty language. Many poems in "Soldier's Home" like "Shaving Without a Mirror," "Radio Days," and "Naming the Trees" contain real hope and sadness illustrating Guernsey's awareness of generational inheritence and passing time. Though many of the poems deal with pain and loss, "Home" is surprisingly, and refreshingly, hopeful for a future when fathers are always home and soldiers are not needed. In this collection Bruce Guernsey celebrates sacrifice respectfully and without pomp while honestly examining the pain war has caused him and his family over the past six decades.

"Soldier's Home" is a must read for anyone who appreciates poetic sincerity and simple, powerful verse.

Bruce Guernsey's "Soldier's Home" has more to it than it seems. On the surface, it is a collection of poems dealing mainly with his father. Beneath the surface, the collection of poems are about the mark The Greatest Generation left on the Baby Boomers. Told from the Baby Boomers point of view, we see what The Greatest Generation brought home with them from the war. Guernsey has vivid details about his childhood, like his father standing up while eating breakfast, and maps that cluttered the bathroom. The relationship between father and son is one any man can either relate to or envy, but the father figure is not the only theme of the book. Poems about uncles and mothers broaden the horizon of a landscape of memories and heartache, beginning in childhood and bringing the reader on a journey of how The Baby Boomers matured and became adults, finally culminating in one of the book's most powerful poems, "The Vase," an ode to a daughter gone but not forgotten. The main theme may be about father and son, with powerful poems like "Shaving without a mirror," and "The Search," driving the theme, but behind this is proof of why The Greatest Generation got its name, and how The Baby Boomers benefited from being raised by them. The relationship between these two generations is strong, and the handprint left on one will leave a mark on this one to come.

To read Bruce Guernsey's poetry is to look through the eyes of one who misses nothing, and in the intensity of the watch takes the time to freefall into a kalaidoscope of images, each quirkier than the last. Imagine looking through binoculars, blurring the images deliberately just to see it differently through the mind's eye, the third eye, if you're inclined, and you have a Bruce Guernsey poem. His poems come from looking at life's moments of greatest charm, tenderness, regret, and longing. They touch on the whimsical too, with great affection, and look deeply into man's raw, open, bleeding heart. His obsession with the loss of his missing father, his long lost, befuddled uncle, his lost marriage and children permeate his verse; the reader cannot help but experience great affection for his lost souls, even his own.

The title of Guernsey's book, Soldier's Home, is more than about soldiers coming home from war; it's about HIS coming home and OUR coming home to the "mysterious, maternal/and into that fullness I enter," or to "his arms in mine and mine in his entwined,/silent in these stout words: 'father,son'," and "your hand is love/and mine that takes/your love in mine."

Pay attention when you read a Guernsey poem; listen closely; don't miss a word, for there are none to spare.

To read Bruce Guernsey's poetry is to look through the eyes of one who misses nothing, and in the intensity of the watch takes time to freefall into a kalaidoscope of images, each quirkier than the last. Imagine looking through binoculars, blurring the images deliberately just to see something differently through the mind's eye, the third eye, if you're inclined, and you have a Bruce Guernsey poem. His poems come from looking at life's moments of greatest charm, tenderness, regret and longing. They touch on the whimsical too, with great affection, and look deeply into man's raw, open, bleeding heart. His obsession with the loss of his missing father, his long lost, befuddled uncle, his lost marriage and children permeate his verse; the reader cannot help but experience great affection for his lost souls, even his own.

The title of Guernsey's newest book, Soldier's Home, is more than about soldier's coming home from war; it's about HIS coming home and OUR coming home to the "mysterious, maternal/and into that fullness I enter," or to "his arms in mine and mine in his entwined,/silent in these stout words: 'father,son', and "your hand is love/ and mine that takes/your love in mine."

Pay attention when you read a Guernsey poem; listen closely, don't miss a word, for there are none to spare.