REVIEWS
Bill Bradd offers us a portal into a multi-dimensional universe via this book of poems and prose poems. Using Pangea for his metaphor of the undivided self at birth and the death of his mother (when he was two and of whom he has no memory) as our point of departure, we enter "the Continent of Ghosts, where all the people you used to know reside now.
Wearing the mask of the Trojan soldier Aeneas—"(stitcher of songs, a wandering performer from occasion to occasion, hoping for payment of some kind, a room or a meal"—Bradd weaves or re-weaves tales of Greece alongside Biblical events, Native American lore and moments torn from his own life. In addition, the narrator is shadowed by Belial, envoy of Satan, and the many surprise shifts in voice and diction add an element of the kaleidoscopic to this already shape-shifting, interconnecting experience.
—Kirpal Gordon, AUTHOR, New York at Twilight; Go Ride the Music; Round Earth; Open Sky
Bill Bradd's Continent of Ghosts is a work of genius. The poetry is breathtaking, lyrical, lush, and metaphorical; it deals with the human condition—loss, war, love, life, and death, all interwoven with the Greek myths and contemporary reality. When Bradd was two, Aeneas left with the poets dead mother; the quest is to find her, but "The nature of the journey makes us unfit for the arrival." The quest is serious, the humor tragic, comic, cosmic, hilarious slapstick. At first you're speechless then you're in stitches. Live for decades on the mouth of a remote, beautiful river entering the ocean, then write a poem of the magnitude and greatness of Continent of Ghosts
—Sharon Dubiago, AUTHOR, Naked to the Earth; Love on the Streets; Hard Country
Reviews of Bill‘s other works
Kirpal Gordon‘s Review
I Tried to Sing In My Grandfather‘s Voice A spoken word CD byWilliam Bradd - appearing in Bigbridge, 2005