Within This Tree of Bones

Written over five decades, these poems begin fixed in the human condition, our common experience of an imperfect world. Slowly, under the aegis of the Spirit, they move toward a brighter vision of things: they ask us to ""dream in that fecund darkness until all shapes are shining."" Poetry offers us an experience of union with the alarming and enthralling world we live in, as well as glimpses of what transcends it and is beyond language. It reminds us that all is connected and supports the hope that light will triumph. The author trusts that these poems may do the same as they explore the chain of being from animal to human, from serpent to angel--and that joy is the final dominant note.

""Robert Siegel is one of my favorite poets, and I'm frustrated that so many readers are unfamiliar with him. This handsome 'new and selected' volume is an ideal introduction to his work, and I may just resort to hawking it on street corners, like those ragamuffin kids peddling papers in old movies. You want the latest news? Read Within This Tree of Bones.""
--John Wilson
Editor, Books & Culture

""Robert Siegel possesses the transformational power of a wizard. Whether he casts his eye on a pig or a night crawler, whether he is standing in falling rain or in a swath of sunlight, he can make the world seem more like itself. For forty years now his poetry has been clarifying the world for me. Bob's new sonnets bring biblical subjects and landscapes into such intimate and vivid language that I will never again think of them in the same way. The things he writes about--as he says in 'The Annunciation'--grow 'more distinct, themselves / in a way beyond explaining.' That seems to me to be a brilliant definition of what great poetry can do. It clarifies the world beyond any other kind of explanation. This book does that. It is filled with great poetry.""
--Jeanne Murray Walker
Professor of English
Head of Creative Writing, University of Delaware

""Robert Siegel's business is tracking whatever order, not chaos, obtains. He knows certainly 'the helpless dance out their fear' as much as 'the divine tread fall[s] again and again.' A cornucopia of wise songs, monologues, psalms, prayers, fables, sonnets, and more, Within This Tree of Bones is what I think a career book should be: ambitious, sonorous, eclectic, serious, joyful.""
--David J Smith,
Professor of Poetry,
Johns Hopkins University


ROBERT SIEGEL (1939-2012) is the author of ten books of poetry and fiction. His poetry includes A Pentecost of Finches, The Waters Under the Earth, In a Pig's Eye, and The Beasts & the Elders. His poetry has won prizes and fellowships from Poetry, Prairie Schooner, America, the Friends of Literature, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His fiction includes the award-winning Whalesong trilogy. He has taught at Dartmouth, Princeton, Wheaton, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he was professor emeritus of English.