cover image The Beauty of the Weapons

The Beauty of the Weapons

Robert Bringhurst. Copper Canyon Press, $10 (160pp) ISBN 978-0-914742-90-6

Bringhurst combines equal parts of erudition and exuberance in these poems of mythic and intellectual history. In a sequence on the pre-Socratic philosophers, he describes them as ""men who knew no distinctions between physicist, philosopher, biologist and poet, and who were, each in his own way, all in one.'' This appears to be an ideal to which Bringhurst aspiresto return knowledge to its original purity. Besides the pre-Socratics, he explores the minds of the ancient Hebrews, Greeks and Egyptians as well as that of a 19th century Coast Salish Indian named Tzuhalem. Whether speaking of them or through them, Bringhurst writes with a natural and musical authorityhe comments in a prefatory note that ``most of the poems are products more of oral composition than of writing.'' Marked by sharpness, vigor and a timeless quality, this collection constitutes a welcome introduction for U.S. readers to this Canadian poet. December