What I Know About Light

Finalist, 2020 Blue Light Poetry Prize In language fearsomely open and fiercely raw, Bruce Majors' newest collection, What I Know About Light, is full of poems that deal with the difficult stuff of real life. From waking where "mortality meets me / face to face each day" ("A Certain Chill") to being "a dream of some sleeper's indulgence" ("Hall of Mirrors"), Majors' engagement with his subject is honest and heartfelt, sharing with the reader his pain as "I thought of my own un-holiness . . . . / I thought of a thousand ways to die" ("Heat Lightning"). This collection explores one person's relationship with nature, with God, and with self and examines the question of a life well lived when loss and loneliness have crept past the joy like the "Winter Sun" "a hollow thought / after the light has done its work." Bruce Majors has published poems in Pirene's Fountain, Ontologica, Wordgathering, Arts and Letters, Pinesong, The Distillery, River Poets Journal, Number One, and other fine literary journals. His collection, The Fields of Owl Roost, was named finalist in the 2005 Indie Excellence Book Awards. Two chapbooks, Last Flight of Angels and Small Patches of Light, were published in 2013 and 2015 by Finishing Line Press. He co-published an anthology, Southern Light, Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets. Mr. Majors is a member of the Chattanooga Writers Guild.

Review :
In language fearsomely open and fiercely raw, Bruce Majors' newest collection, What I Know About Light, is full of poems that deal with the difficult stuff of real life. From waking where "mortality meets me / face to face each day" ("A Certain Chill") to being "a dream of some sleeper's indulgence" ("Hall of Mirrors"), Majors' engagement with his subject is honest and heartfelt, sharing with the reader his pain as "I thought of my own un-holiness . . . . / I thought of a thousand ways to die" ("Heat Lightning"). This collection explores one person's relationship with nature, with God, and with self and examines the question of a life well lived when loss and loneliness have crept past the joy like the "Winter Sun" "a hollow thought / after the light has done its work." --KB Ballentine, author of The Light Tears Loose and Almost Everything, Almost Nothing "In the tradition of Sholom Aleichem and other great philosopher poets, Bruce Majors wrestles with large issues in What I Know About Light. He wrestles with the world, with the life he has lived, and wrestles with angels to the point of arguing with God. And in the tradition of the great philosopher poets, he finds the light inside of appearances. These are poems that must be read." --Diane Frank, author of Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines and Yoga of the Impossible In What I Know About Light, Bruce Majors not only creates striking lines about a physical geography he knows so well ("Small lights blink along Walden Ridge to the west / as the sun draws its last heavy breath"), but he also pens unforgettable phrases illuminating the geography of longing, grief, and faith. In the title poem, he speaks of our place in the universe as "Small light in a vast darkness." Majors' words hit hard in a beauty coupled with spare honesty, his themes casting vast nets for meaning in the midst of an imperfect, often devastating world. In "We Are One," he admits his own mental-health struggles: "Riven, / one side loves music, the other, pain. / We sleep together in each other's dream." But this poet does not leave us comfortless any more than Jane Kenyon's God does. Majors tells us, "I stand upright in my spirit, wholly lighted, / baptized in moonlight, / slide a john boat into the dark waters of absolution . . ." Hopeful but never counterfeit, he bears witness to the endlessness of the search. --Cathy Ann Kodra, author of Under an Adirondack Moon