4evrsumr

I was recently asked by eBay to offer my comments regarding:   

across the dark

by Brett Brady 

(paperback)

illustrated 

(c) 1970

pub: Celestial Arts 1973 

about: across the dark

from there-to-here: it must be light

(4 out of 5 stars)

Modesty prevents any higher rating, and with all due respect for the author (uh... that would be me), I think an even greater due is owed the times in which a thing is written ["in the beginning" ...was… ((the word)?)].

So, “bravos” and “kudos” to the first rung on this (or any) ladder. For all its lowliness, it is, in the last analysis, the very prospect of at least one more step which holds the hope of something loftier yet to discover, and   draws a dream into a possibility. Whatever it might lack in elegance, it will always remain a promise-based building-block: the prime-element planted at the foundation and, in many ways, the most enduringly stable feature. There's always a first, though not necessarily the best, of the rest to follow.

It took nearly forty years for the next rung to be constructed... I suppose I was in no particular hurry to rise to “the top” of anything. The span between then and now is immense; practically immeasurable. Although the crying-out for peace and love and flowers is surely the strong underlying ambiance streaming just beneath the surface of this book, proudly, nothing rings too loudly of propaganda, and oddly enough, after all these years, many things have somehow risen on their own account to something which might be better regarded as a sweetness, rather than a bittering, on the palette, so prevalent in those "end-of-days" of the late sixties.

Compared to "wind in the pages"  my current book, tones have muted. The vibrancy of the colors are better understood now and more gracefully internalized. The old roads traveled and the distant bridges crossed are far too many to particularize or lionize. It all inevitably boils down to an appreciation for and focus on things of supposedly lesser import and preserving the wealth of deeper moments, rich in greater detail... and not so grand a colluded-partnering in the illusions and delusions of the time, nor overly romanticized by the "sometimes witty" or satiric-notions of an ideal-laden young poet.

The greatest of heights are grounded in the seemingly ordinary generic quality of everyday life... I guess you could say that glory is best left for those bent on looking to go somewhere, like: "up?" [from "here-to-there" on some personal "ladder-of-accomplishments"] - We go from baby steps and grow to maturity... as is evidenced then in the shimmering glow of lines of youthful hope and, ironically, also lying (perhaps a little dimmed by time) somewhere between them, the light of some illusive truth.

Yet, for all its naivety, there are moments when "across the dark" waxes a kind of lyrical-homage to the very darkness it eschews... and still shines as it was originally meant, like a light thru a tunnel.