CIRCUMFERENCE OF LIGHT - Tecno-Libro

i ve always enjoyed Bruce Noll s poems, but the sweep of Circumference of Light comes as a revelation. i ve been used to seeing Noll transform into Walt Whitman, both in his Pure Grass performances and often in his poetry as well, but the Whitman influence is less pronounced here (though he makes an appearance late in the book), and the Emily Dickinson-inspired title of the volume signals a new kind of intensity and refraction in many of the poems. The subject matter remains very much Whitmanian, though, from naked bodies to decaying flesh, from brushing a wife s hair to lacing a girl s skates, from the muck of ponds to worm and insect-rich toad shit. Each poem is a Dickinsonian stairway of surprise usually emerging from the always surprising and often humorous commonplace, though there s room for the sublime as well, as poem after poem returns us to the cosmos, black holes, northern lights, gravitational waves. From four-line gems to mor