The Texture of Days, in Ash and Leaf (North Shore)

Haunting sketches from the leanest light of memories, from spare & sharp boned emotions. Kauffman's ghostly lyrics are evocative traceries, fissures of words. Catherine Owen, author of nine collections of poetry, including the AB Literary Prize-winning collection Frenzy (Anvil Press 2009).

There is a quiet grace and a persistent fierceness at work in Bruce Kauffman's first full length collection of poetry. Grounded in the contemplative tradition, each poem serves as a way-marker along a desire-line. Kauffman's voice is intimate and direct, perceptive and guiding-there is a real honesty here. Sandra Ridley, author of Fallout, winner of the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Award for Publishing, and Post-Apothecary (2011). Here is a poet who pays rapt attention to both the agony and ecstasy of being alive, who hears not only "crystalline echoes/of empty hearts/calling," but also gazes with wonder at the "multicoloured forest/of mirror/and glass." Bruce Kauffman doesn't establish his voice as a grand authority, but rather, as a seeker, a sojourner; his is a poetry of both wisdom, negative capability, yet also humility, a poetic world in which the flowers in the window box "understood the rain/far better than i." The cosmos is bigger, older, and wiser, and Kauffman gives himself over to its rhythms, both dark and light. Jeanette Lynes, author of The New Blue Distance, The Factory Voice, and 5 collections of poetry.

If you boiled the world in a pot, the steam would resemble Bruce Kauffman's poetry. Personal. Universal. Elegiac. Prayerful. The poems in this book are timeless mirrors reflecting a world that belongs to everyone, a world stripped down to its spiritual bones. Jason Heroux, author of the poetry collection Emergency Hallelujah (Mansfield Press) and the novella Good Evening, Central Laundromat (Quattro Books).