No book has more to say about our times than W.S. Merwin’s, The Lice. I was honored to have the opportunity to review the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, published by Copper Canyon Press, for the New York Journal of Books. Here is an excerpt of the review:
In this fiftieth anniversary edition, there exists the opportunity to access Merwin’s writings created in such tumultuous times, yet along with the reading of this volume is the eerie sense that his poems are particularly suited to the current condition of our world. So well-matched, in fact, that someone not familiar with the background of The Lice will see the poems’ statements as relevant to the unfolding of the political and socioeconomic dynamics that daily are unveiled across the media, worldwide. Look at the second stanza of Merwin’s poem, “The Last One”:
Bruce Arlen Wasserman assembled his first poetry manuscript with a typewriter on the kitchen table when he was seventeen, farmed and worked as a blacksmith, drove a tractor-trailer in college, edited professional journals, wrote as a freelance journalist and is a dentist. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, was a semi-finalist for the Francine Ringold Awards for New Writers, a semi-finalist for the Proverse Prize and won the Anna Davidson Rosenberg 2019 Poetry Award. He writes poetry and fiction. His book, THE BROKEN NIGHT, was published by Finishing Line Press in July, 2022.
Bruce received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a literary critic for the New York Journal of Books. His writing has been published in the Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology, The Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, The River Heron Review, Kindred Literary Magazine, the Broad River Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, High Shelf Literary Magazine, Wild Roof Journal and the Washington Independent Review of Books. Beyond writing, he creates visual art as a potter at Bruce Arlen Wasserman Studio, where he draws from the reservoir of poetry and his experience in working iron and wood, correlating a continued exploration of language, function and esoteric form.
An Undiscovered Country (Horace Simerman Press, 2011) is going further in its travels around the globe. The collection of poems by Bruce Arlen Wasserman exploring love in all its dimensions, is now being sold in Norway, Finland and Sweden and is being carried in the UK at Waterstones, which has nearly 300 shops in Britain and at Berkelouw Books in Australia, one of Australia's oldest booksellers.
These locations add to the expanding worldwide distribution network already in place for the collection. It is being marketed by booksellers in France, Germany, Australia, Japan and Croatia, as well as online in the USA at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com and at other locations worldwide through independent and online booksellers.
Wasserman’s work takes an in-depth look at love in a unique way, exposing the sedimentary layers of this topic that traverses cultures to cut right to the root of the human condition. In addition to its unique poetic point of view, the work is being touted as a pivotal new look at relationships.
