The Mild Day

With his third collection in three years, Bronk ( Life Supports ) is at his philosophical best. Like his previous work, these brief, highly spiritual poems probe the nature (or inanity) of life, and how speech plays a role in shaping what man thinks he is. But, whereas most poets are obsessed with finding the proper names for objects within their range of vision, these poems imply that, since the meanings of words are subject to change over time, any name will do. What matters is action; man alone has the ability not only to move, but to choose his movements, to create. ``To be is the verb to be. The noun pretends.'' An English teacher's nightmare, these minimalist poems string together verbs and adverbs, seldom in anything approximating what we usually think of as a sentence. Nouns are often abstract and always general-- ``truth,'' ``sadnesses,'' ``poverty,'' ``devotion''--yet in the hands of this literary descendant of Louis Zukofsky and the other Objectivist poets, no poem lacks specificity. For the first time in Bronk's work, pronouns include more than the speaker; ``we,'' ``us'' and ``you'' predominate, while the ``I'' is ``inanimate, marked for discard.'' The fact that Bronk is now 75 years old gives words such as these additional credence. (Oct.)