Reviews
of The Obvious
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A Brenda Hillman Selection
“In Bradley Paul’s poems, the reader hears someone odd, unlikely,
and, to a large extent, unknowable, speaking in reasoned tones about unreasonable
things. The dramas are neither picturesque stories nor familiar tales about
self revelation. They don’t work within the by-now familiar patterns of
poetry. In locating the speaker in words, rather than placing him (or her) in
stories, Paul compels the reader to contemplate whether words lead one to knowing
someone else or to recognizing further mysteries. Perhaps, as Paul’s poems
suggest, it (and we) are always somewhere in between; and perhaps language’s
purpose isn’t to tell but to entrance, delight, and undermine.”
—John Yau, Boston Review
“The ocean opens ‘as though it were a bees’ hive full of wrens,’
and table salt ‘lopes like ink from a copper well.’ With a sublime
palette that ranges from zen simplicity to elegant diction, Bradley Paul reveals
the internal life of things. How refreshing to behold the beauty of The Obvious.
For, as Wilde reminds us, ‘the real mystery of the world is the visible,
not the invisible.’”
—D.A. Powell
“In one place Bradley Paul writes, ‘Their language sounds like scissors.
/ Their scissors sound like a wren / or something common, / treading at
the far side of the pool / where the gallies oar up for a fight,’ characteristically
giving us a unique metaphor and then, just as we have assimilated it, qualifying
it, again and again. Through a poetic journey of such associative leaps—fine
tunings of our perceptions, really—a journey from Maryland to Senegal to
Slovenia and Germany, and through characters as diverse as Lucretius, Poulet,
a beachcomer, centaurs, and a baseball player, to name just a few, Paul reinvents
the reality of our world as metaphor, as Wallace Stevens described it. For Paul,
the world is a palimpsest, with layer upon layer of rich association. As unique
and startling as the perceptions and poems are, Paul has a way, like one of
the ancient seers, of letting us feel that these visions are our own, or, as
he says, ‘The color of your voice / moves in me.’ This is an incredible
first book that immediately catapults Bradley Paul to a position of one of our
more important voices.”
—Richard Jackson
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