Listening to the Bowl Crack

In Listening to the Bowl Crack, Robert Bense shares a poet's view of the world. It is a world of searching and remote voyages, small moments and discovery, where language creates emotion and draws us in for still another line, one more poem.From grand opera to a temple garden of azaleas, Bense's poetry carries us across poignant landscapes of myth, memory, and daydream. In verses such as those found in "Peacock Hill" we encounter the past touching the present and edging toward the future: I read their names.Touch their stones.My tracks are all over.I could leave. Or stop hereand disappear.And, at some point, readers may realize that through Listening to the Bowl Crack, Bense has created a world in which we all might wish to travel.