A Stroll in the Rain - by George Bradley (Paperback)

About the Book

"A Stroll in the Rain both distills and expands a body of poetry compiled over some thirty-five years by showcasing the full range of George Bradley's compositional methods and abiding concerns. In his work, Bradley employs a wide variety of verse forms, both formal and free, and the selections in this volume accordingly encompass many different genres: lyric, prophetic utterance, meditative essay, elegy and ode, liturgy and dream, satire and send-up. Bradley moves back and forth between chatty, conversational pieces and those which are reserved and even enigmatic. Throughout, he achieves a tone that is genial, inclusive, and alert to the mutual sympathy between writer and reader upon which any successful poem depends. A Stroll in the Rain is deeply serious and moving, yet often humorous, too. This rich selection of masterful poems proves that there is no harm in having fun"--

Book Synopsis

George Bradley's A Stroll in the Rain is at once a retrospective volume and a new advance in the career of one of our most accomplished poets. Distilling more than thirty-five years of his work, this volume exhibits a wide variety of styles and forms, ranging from brief lyric to extended verse essay, establishing moods that encompass humor, tenderness, and surprise. The substantial section of new work shows Bradley deepening his exploration of the only two topics finally available to any author: the mystery of human consciousness and the unassimilable fact of death.

From agriculture to astrophysics, from New England winters to Tuscan summers, and much else besides, A Stroll in the Rain presents spirited, often witty poetry that is skillful, rich, and fun.

Review Quotes

George Bradley's A Stroll in the Rain is one of the most magnificent books I've read in years. His poems are the opposite of grandiose or bombastic, and yet they make most other poems seem diminished. They revel in the sheer pleasure of the agility and continuity of language, yet they're tempered by the modesty of intelligence---as a feeling of constantly renewed real life suffuses the texture of perfectly poised language, even though they're not so much about language as lasting contributions to it. At the same time, no poet I know if writes so much about life, especially in astonishing long poems like "Waiting for Gloria" and "How I Got in the Business," or about what the life of the mind is like, as in "An Argument with Reason," a great poem that at first makes you feel there's nothing he's determined to tell you, until you realize that there is: poetry as a condition of life.-- "John Koethe"

Reading George Bradley's New and Selected Poems is a good deal more like a wide-ranging expedition through any number of cities and landscapes and climates than it is like A Stroll in the Rain. These poems abound in honesty, formal mastery and trenchant wit. Bradley is the only contemporary American I know of who can pull off a poem in the tradition of the eighteenth-century poetic satire. His consistently inventive poems are by turns rueful and celebratory, political and personal, heartbreaking and hilarious. At times, they're even clairvoyant.-- "Jacqueline Osherow"

About the Author

George Bradley is the author of five previous books of verse. Among other honors, he has received the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the Witter Bynner Prize, the Peter I. B. Lavan Award, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bradley's work has appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, the Paris Review, and six of the annual Best American Poetry volumes. He lives in Connecticut.