Working the Stone
by Bryce Milligan
0-930324-30-7 Cost: $20.00
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Reviews
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"Art of Making" by Chuck Taylor, Ph.D., Texas A&M Univ., published in Small Press Review (July-Aug. 1996):
We all know we're going to die. We don't like it -- most of us -- but what can we do about it? Well, we can pray to God that we be admitted to heaven, we can have babies, and we can live a happy and meaningful life. These are the common consolations, but artists of all kinds have suggested something further. One can create an object which will live beyond one's short term on earth.
It's a beautiful book, Bryce Milligan's Working the Stone, with lovely illustrations by Angela de Hoyos. Milligan is a kind of modern renaissance man, writing novels, story collections, plays for children, playing folk music, making musical instruments, carving limestone sculptures, and all these activities have a big influence on the poetry in Working the Stone.
The central question of the collection is how do we find meaning in life, given the inexorable march of time that eventually destroys all that we know. The answer Milligan gives is the art of making, whatever the medium. By making, we can fix time and preserve that which is fleeting and mortal. Sculpting out of stone, or making a clay pot, is this artist's effort to preserve and honor a moment, a feeling, or a relationship.
"Away in the dark, my hands ache to capture her insouciance in stone," he writes in "Manque." In this book we have many important rememberings fixed in the stone of words -- tributes to parents, a dead brother, and a lost love.
For Milligan, distinctions need not be made between the work of art and other kinds of work. All work is making. In "Trusting Steel," the poet is chopping oak, and the sound made by his blade connects him with other poets: Robert Frost, Donald Hall and Simon Ortiz. Art is an act of remembering, but it must never be an excuse to run from life. In "San Antonio Nights," the poet talks about being "away from the literate river." The reference is to the San Antonio River which flows through downtown San Antonio and is known by tourists from all over the world. Sydney Lanier, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams all knew that "literate river" and the Alamo, where "heroic ashes / still burn the nostrils." But what grabs the poet is the sound "in the long dark rain" of "a child's cry." The cry calls the poet "into the streets to seek a face to match the pain."
These are poems set solidly in their region. We learn about San Antonio, where the poet makes his home, and about other Texas places, from White Deer to Dallas. Blood connection to the past and the land is strong. But the collection is not parochial. The poet reaches beyond. A number of the poems speak to a woman lost, now living on an island in Greece.
How do we find meaning in life? We make it, through our work, Milligan writes. This is a beautiful collection, full of emotionally powerful poems neither pretentious nor obscure. By making, the poet shows us how to make out own lives.
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Art of Making
Small Press ReviewJuly-Aug. 1996
We all know we're going to die. We don't like it -- most of us -- but what can we do about it? Well, we can pray to God that we be admitted to heaven, we can have babies, and we can live a happy and meaningful life. These are the common consolations, but artists of all kinds have suggested something further. One can create an object which will live beyond one's short term on earth.
It's a beautiful book, Bryce Milligan's Working the Stone, with lovely illustrations by Angela de Hoyos. Milligan is a kind of modern renaissance man, writing novels, story collections, plays for children, playing folk music, making musical instruments, carving limestone sculptures, and all these activities have a big influence on the poetry in Working the Stone.
The central question of the collection is how do we find meaning in life, given the inexorable march of time that eventually destroys all that we know. The answer Milligan gives is the art of making, whatever the medium. By making, we can fix time and preserve that which is fleeting and mortal. Sculpting out of stone, or making a clay pot, is this artist's effort to preserve and honor a moment, a feeling, or a relationship.
"Away in the dark, my hands ache to capture her insouciance in stone," he writes in "Manque." In this book we have many important rememberings fixed in the stone of words -- tributes to parents, a dead brother, and a lost love.
For Milligan, distinctions need not be made between the work of art and other kinds of work. All work is making. In "Trusting Steel," the poet is chopping oak, and the sound made by his blade connects him with other poets: Robert Frost, Donald Hall and Simon Ortiz. Art is an act of remembering, but it must never be an excuse to run from life. In "San Antonio Nights," the poet talks about being "away from the literate river." The reference is to the San Antonio River which flows through downtown San Antonio and is known by tourists from all over the world. Sydney Lanier, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams all knew that "literate river" and the Alamo, where "heroic ashes / still burn the nostrils." But what grabs the poet is the sound "in the long dark rain" of "a child's cry." The cry calls the poet "into the streets to seek a face to match the pain."
These are poems set solidly in their region. We learn about San Antonio, where the poet makes his home, and about other Texas places, from White Deer to Dallas. Blood connection to the past and the land is strong. But the collection is not parochial. The poet reaches beyond. A number of the poems speak to a woman lost, now living on an island in Greece.
How do we find meaning in life? We make it, through our work, Milligan writes. This is a beautiful collection, full of emotionally powerful poems neither pretentious nor obscure. By making, the poet shows us how to make out own lives.
About This Author
Read more about Bryce Milligan HERE.