George Bradley

George Bradley Poems

It makes one all right, though you hadn't thought of it,
A sound like the sound of the sky on fire, like Armageddon,
Whistling and crackling, the explosions of sunlight booming
...

West Fifty-third was still Hell's Kitchen
the summer I first came to town,
Eleventh Avenue was boarded up,
the West Side Drive was falling down;
...

In the southern Adriatic, where the blue begins,
We came to rest awhile and play
On sun-drenched islands known as Tremiti,
Where the breeze blows fresh
...

Her handlers, dressed in vests and flannel pants,
Step forward in the weak winter light
Leading a behemoth among elephants,
Topsy, to another exhibition site;
...

George Bradley Biography

George Bradley is an American poet, editor, and fiction writer whose work is characterized by formal structure, humor, and satirical narrative. Life He attended the Hill School, Yale University, and the University of Virginia. His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, New England Review, The New Republic, the Paris Review. In 1998 he edited The Yale Younger Poets Anthology, which traced the history of the first poetry series in America from its inception in 1919 to 1997. The critic Peter Davison praised this anthology in the Atlantic Monthly for uncovering an important chapter of American literary history: Bradley "introduces each selection with a brief identification of its author, and prefaces his anthology with introductory matter amounting to nearly a hundred pages of graceful, witty, and discriminating prose that combines aesthetic perception, historical understanding, and publishing shrewdness. The result is a book that illuminates the recesses between artists, audiences, public taste, and the history of American publication. Awards 1985 Yale Younger Poets Series, selected by James Merrill The Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters The Peter I. B. Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets)

The Best Poem Of George Bradley

The Sound Of The Sun

It makes one all right, though you hadn't thought of it,
A sound like the sound of the sky on fire, like Armageddon,
Whistling and crackling, the explosions of sunlight booming
As the huge mass of gas rages into the emptiness around it.
It isn't a sound you are often aware of, though the light speeds
To us in seconds, each dawn leaping easily across a chasm
Of space that swallows the sound of that sphere, but
If you listen closely some morning, when the sun swells
Over the horizon and the world is still and still asleep,
You might hear it, a faint noise so far inside your mind
That it must come from somewhere, from light rushing to darkness,
Energy burning towards entropy, towards a peaceful solution,
Burning brilliantly, spontaneously, in the middle of nowhere,
And you, too, must make a sound that is somewhat like it,
Though that, of course, you have no way of hearing at all.

George Bradley Comments

George Bradley Popularity

George Bradley Popularity

Close
Error Success