Robert Bense is a poet of “music across great distance.” His horizons are vast, his voice is haunting. Readings in Ordinary Time deepens each time you open it—wide-ranging, self-questioning, fully aware of the dangers of knowledge,
uncompromising in its search for knowledge. This is extraordinary work.
—D. Nurkse
Location, location, location, the title of one of the later poems in Readings in Ordinary Time proclaims, echoing the mantra of realtors and small business. But this book’s business is with prime realty that expands from the hollyhock in the dooryard to the Straits of Messina, from the Dallas 7-11 to Liu Ling’s cell “in the garden of the universe.” In what recent poetry book do we find such an intriguing geography, as well as an eclectic, eccentric, and engaging company that includes Machiavelli, Tadeusz Rosewicz and Sainte-Colombe? In a voice we come not just to trust but count on, Robert Bense invites us to read
this world, this terra incognita, in all its nuances and mysteries. This is a deeply spiritual book, its serious music/changing keys, bringing to our ordinary time extraordinary powers of language.
—Christopher Bursk
