David Bromige (1933-2009)

by Pierre Joris · June 3, 2009

David Bromige

poet, scholar, gentleman

& writer, reviewer, actor, farmer, explorer, cartographer, storyteller, illustrator,piano player, driver, swimmer, traveler, brother, uncle, father, grandfather, husband, friend, mentor,
passed away this morning
he is sorely missed

Charles Bernstein posted these links where you can check out some of his work:

My Poetry (5:25)  (NOTE: cut is missing about 10 seconds of the poem)

Dear Charles (1:06)

Bromige Sound Recordings at PennSound

Bromige EPC author page

Family’s page

David Bromige: In Place of a Preface

Upon Robert Duncan’s ‘My Mother Would Be A Falconress’ [given that] I’d be her falcon and ‘wear the little hood’ [then] ‘my soul would be a falcon and fly free’/ [given that] ‘my soul would be a falcon and fly free’ [then] I’d ‘wear the little hood’

In Place of a Preface

Pound’s ‘They think they’ll get through Hell in a hurry’ / ‘Hast thou found a softer nest’

Sartre’s ‘No Exit’: ‘Hell is other people’ [given that Heaven is, too]

Dostoevsky: ‘If God is dead, everything’s permitted’ / Lacan: ‘No, then nothing is permitted’

Davidson: [where] ‘can a language speak of the heart without first inventing a heart by which to speak?’

I have imagined alphabets whose words would secure a Paradise. I have heard their sentences sounded out, and felt the warmth of the speaker’s breath, until with a jolt the Impossible became its opposite. And this is why resistance became a way of life. But it did not satisfy. A poem came to be consolation, but its alphabet belonged to my enemies, who wanted me erased.

‘T, as in Tether’ a friend said to me, a long, long time ago, as a way to explain that she had to step back from frankness, now another person, in some way dear to her, had entered the room.

‘Initializing,’ ‘Establishing,’ and ‘Authenticating’ are the 3 steps whereby one logs on with the software I use. Each time, one code ‘reads’ another. These I took to be akin to the stages of relationship. ‘Authenticating’ sounded too hopeful, once I had gotten metaphorical with it, so I altered it to ‘Authenticizing,’ to rime with the first step, and also with ‘simonizing,’ etc.

In one’s craft, or sullen art — to yoke 2 quotes of Dylan Thomas — we sing in our chains, like the sea. Hear the single in the shingle, the double-you ache of the wave. ‘Mister’ W. Ache, thi onlie begetter of the ensuing. It beats ‘breaking, rocks in the hot sun.’ Poetry is the theory of heartbreak. That sentence can be rearranged so that its nouns are in any order of precedence, and still be true.

— D.B.