Reviews
Review by: J. Fuller, author of THE DISSENTER'S GROUND and FLOOD - July 1, 2018
For those of us from the swamps and coastal marshes, a Jack Bedell poem often says what we feel but could not say. His ability to focus his eye on the landscape and deftly place us among the reeds is an uncommon gift, but one we have come to take for granted in his work. The poems in NO BROTHER, THIS STORM are stark in their vision and deep in their wisdom. We devour these poems the way the water devours land, and we ready our bones for flight.
Review by: Jeffrey Alfier, editor of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review - July 1, 2018
With the acute perceptions of a seasoned poet, Jack Bedell's NO BROTHER, THIS STORM speaks poignantly of what we love--how place and family prevail over what passes away. Attentive to the world around him, the Cajun and coastal Louisiana of his youth and current life, family history, and folklore are impressively interwoven, traversing generations "to mingle with our dreams / for as long as the river flows." The range of these poems is no narrow playing field; each poem resonates with the wider world, engaging us through the humanity we all share. Storms take their toll when "blacktopped roads lead nowhere", and uncertain sounds in a swamp mean following an omen "like compass needles" to safety. Grace comes when a "Cold morning becomes psalm", when "there is no other shelter to offer /…/save/ color and soft voices." It is through such images, compelling and rich, that Bedell’s poems draw resilience from what blesses our lives, rendering NO BROTHER, THIS STORM a luminous, exemplary work.
Review by: Sarah Cortez, author of COLD BLUE STEEL - July 1, 2018
NO BROTHER, THIS STORM takes us on a stroll into the humid, fecund waterways of Jack Bedell's portion of the Gulf Coast called Louisiana. But don't be fooled into thinking that this gorgeously rendered landscape is anything less than the dreamscape that haunts us all--the internal externalized into tableaus full of those who have come before and those to whom we seek to give the future as a holy present. The greatest gift (and there are many) of this sequence of poems is that through their careful, painterly, and meditative aspects we ourselves become "revenant," that is, Bedell's walk with us transforms us into someone who returns as transparent with meaning and hopeful beauty as are his poems.
Review by: Darrell Bourque, former Louisiana Poet Laureate and author of MEGAN'S GUITAR AND OTHER POEMS FROM ACADIE and WHERE I WAITED - July 1, 2018
It's the tender urgencies that get me every time in Jack Bedell's poems. These NO BROTHER, THIS STORM poems lean into eternal return: a father saving things against themselves, uncles whose enigmatic sayings are finally realized, dos-gris diving for food, a dead turtle's last stretch into grace, the pelican's fight into the wind, ancient timeless wind in hair, and that part of the place making the sea grass green. Each poem here is as alive as yeast in sweet dough rising in a mother's kitchen.