The Bonds of Nest and Urn: Poems - Paperback

by Jefferson Holdridge (Author)

The Bonds of Nest and Urn examines the forms and purposes of nature and art, revealing how the artist's vision--sometimes Orphic, sometimes Christian--ultimately unites the two. The spirit moves through number and metaphor, and the volume asks whether poetry can exist apart from history or personality, even though both inevitably remain present. The narrative arc of the poems flows from art to nature, though the two remain deeply intertwined. Many pieces focus on flora and fauna, with birds serving as muses and trees imagined both as objects of artistic perspective and as towering emblems of nature, commanding respect and, at times, fear. Stones are regarded as objects of art, reverence, and scientific inquiry, while the poems draw connections among the four classical elements--fire, air, water, and earth. The volume's richly layered personal and cultural perspectives, informed by the poet's American upbringing and years in Ireland and Italy, offer a nuanced exploration of how nature and culture shape human experience. Readers who appreciate poetry with a vivid sense of place will find much to savor.

Author Biography

Director of Wake Forest University Press and professor of English at WFU in North Carolina, Jefferson Holdridge is the author of four previous volumes of poetry: Eruptions (2013), Devil's Den and Other Poems (2015), The Sound Thereof (2017), and The Wells Of Venice (Resource: 2020). He has written three critical books, W.B. Yeats (2000), Paul Muldoon (2008), and Stepping Through Origins: Nature, Home, and Landscape in Irish Literature (2022)