George Bradley, whose previous work has drawn praise from James Merrill and Harold Bloom, here meditates on contemporary culture, on the natural world and the world imagined, and on the life of the poet. Whether he is standing in line at the SuperSave, where tabloids beckon, or contemplating the change of seasons in a classic sonnet sequence, Bradley juxtaposes the sublime workings of the mind with the mundane static that surrounds it. What he finds in this conjunction is a surprising beauty, a uniquely contemporary formal music, and, often, a curative dose of humor. Even verse itself is not exempt from his clarifying view, as he proves in “How I Got in the Business,” a wild ride through several sorts of commerce, including the poetry trade. Throughout Some Assembly Required, Bradley savors both the riveting accident of everyday life and the long view afforded by art, in poetry that is taut, witty, and dynamic.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
James Tate meets James Merrill as technical competence, wry digs and surreal image-play triumph over self-questioning and actual engagement in Bradley's fourth collection. Bradley (The Fire Fetched Down) won the Yale Younger Poets award in 1985, went on to edit the series' 1998 anthology, and is here backed by a blurb from Yale don Harold Bloom that invokes the above JM (as well as the ever-invoked JA John Ashbery). Bradley does have formal and imagistic chops, much in evidence in the book's second poem, "Autochthons Are Standing By": "If their eyes grown wide as orbs of herbivores/ Searched for his freak flamboyance, dread device... / Whinging pup, pubescent klutz, no nubile maid/ Ablush with tenderness and embarrassment of thought..." But thought does indeed seem an embarrassment to be consciously skirted throughout. The sonnet sequence "A Year in New England" veers into Billy Collins's signature pseudo-schmaltz, "Over a new world asked to readjust/ Snow comes down as miraculous as dust." The long sendup "How I Got in the Business" comically juxtaposes mob-backed olive oil sales with poetic self-presentation, without quite managing to dis the hallowed bildung trinity of Cambridge, Mass.'s Grolier Poetry Book Shop, the New Yorker and the 92nd Street Y. The mid-career nostalgic satire continues in "A Poet in the Kitchen," which riffs on being young and not-very affluent in the big city ("New York City was flat broke./ I, too, was broke, the flat was free"). The speaker finds himself in a storage space for a burgeoning art gallery, where "truth be told, it was hard to tell/ where art might end and garbage start." Readers will have some of the same trouble here.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
"Many things happen in Chester, Connecticut,/ but the invasion of Tamerlain is not one of them." Still, the great warrior insinuates himself into the poet's thoughts on a snowy day when he's feeling down, overlooked, and unnoticed in the grand scheme of things, taking comfort in knowing that Tamerlain still rides on. Bradley, a Yale Younger Poet in 1985, is not unsettled by the absurdity of it all but encouraged and energized. He reveals some false starts of the Creator in "Experiments in Creation Science" and reconsiders plans for the "new" Ark: "Cockroaches, of course, the professionals,/ As well as most varieties of lice,/ And indeed insects of every description." The anchor of the collection, though, is a long but wonderfully smart and funny poem entitled "How I Got in the Business" that is itself worth the price of admission: "your uncle, let's say, is a prominent/ mafia boss who neglected to get his degree/ and so buys your way into Harvard,/ where it will be your privilege to see/ the best minds of a generation/ sitting in traffic on Memorial Drive." A chance glance through a bookshop window, and he finds "there's no accounting where POETRY's taste is concerned" and is seduced into the game or so he tells us in the 686th line. Bradley's satirical knives flash loud and quick. Recommended. Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry's best kept secret,
By A Customer
This review is from: Some Assembly Required: Poems (Hardcover)
After four dazzling books, George Bradley is one of the best kept secrets in contemporary American poetry. A writer whose subjects range from science and philosophy to Renaissance art and everyday life, he writes beautiful, funny, and extremely smart poetry. Try "How I Got in the Business" for a hilarious narrative that parallels the poetry biz with raising and producing olive oil for a mafia family. This poem is the author's second Georgic (his first was "A Georgic for Doug Crane," which told in equally funny detail how to raise, press, and bottle grapes). In both, the laughter gives way to reflection, and ultimately, beauty by the end. It's Bradley's signature gesture--the sudden turn from irreverence to lyric grace. Here, he pulls the trick off again and again: in shorter poems, like "A Poet in the Kitchen" and "My Poem Meets Tamerlane," as well as in the gorgeous sonnet sequence on the turn of the seasons, "A Year in New England."
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Did you think you had a great vocabulary?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Some Assembly Required: Poems (Hardcover)
Just wait until you read George Bradley. He's standing on the shoulders of Webster's Unabridged. He picks great words and then darn if he doesn't know how to put them together. If you've got your heart set on reading poetry that will give you chill-bumps, this book is the one to buy.
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