Circumference of Light

Ive always enjoyed Bruce Nolls poems but the sweep of Circumference of Light comes as a revelation. Ive 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 wifes hair to lacing a girls 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 theres 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 more extended narratives aging and death are our inevitable companions and time and again we come upon a poem of near perfection like Week Moments which will change forever how you think of a calendar.Ed Folsom Editor Walt Whitman Quarterly Review & the Whitman Series for the University of Iowa Press