The Mojave Road and Other Journeys
Bruce Williams' The Mojave Road and Other Journeys is simply one of the most breathtaking and heartbreaking collections of poetry I've read in many years. These poems constitute a sequence of elegies and a folio of meditations upon illness, death and transcendence, and also upon the nature of late, redeeming love. As in Theodore Roethke's psychologically dense, timeless, and powerful poem, "Journey to the Interior," Bruce Williams spiritual self-confrontation charts a dangerous, often precarious landscape of intimate loss and the consequent potential for the wreckage of the self. --David St. JohnThree centuries ago the Japanese poet Basho created his masterpiece 'Narrow Road to the Interior' out of a pilgrimage on foot through the backcountry of northern Honshu. The Japanese character for the word 'interior' implies both an actual location and a spiritual interior. His book is a chronicle of his journey as well as an examination of his own spiritual life. In The Mojave Road and Other Journeys Bruce Williams has created a masterpiece out of two journeys, one literal, the other his struggle with the loss of a loved one and his own mortality. Basho said: 'The journey itself is my home' and in his profoundly moving procession of poems Bruce Williams mourns the end of one journey while attempting to redefine the meaning of 'home' in his life. --John HarrisThe poetry of Bruce Williams is always a journey of inner and outer discovery for both the poet and the reader. Many of these poems would be emotionally devastating were they not so finely crafted and the voice so assured and assuring as the poet confronts mutability, mortality, and redemption. This is a collection of serious intent and profound impact. --Jim Natal