Survivors' Picnic
The rich language of Debra Bruce’s Survivors’ Picnic—whether she’s meditating on cancer survival, describing the nervous colleagues of a transgendered secretary, or playfully satirizing a divorce support group—is sensual in its caress of the world, its music cascading into semi-formal free verse as well as sonnets, villanelles, and pantoums.
"Survivors Picnic is full of generous poems, their rifts loaded with ore. From pithy narratives to evocative lyrics, these are poems that can take us out of ourselves, by a poet who has learned her art, who knows that poetry is song at heart. Brava, Debra Bruce!"
-- Annie Finch
"Debra Bruce's poetry is a secret treasure--to be discovered and read and re-read. Every lover of language can partake of Bruce's passionate picnic."
-- Molly Peacock
Survivors' Picnic, published in November, 2012, is from Word Press (Word Tech Editions).
What Wind Will Do
"What strikes me about What Wind Will Do is Debra Bruce's wonderful eye for the luminous detail and the wrenching but understated lyricism of imminent loss. I admire how Bruce combines an intimacy and accuracy of feeling with the control and skill of formal structures. Along with such poets as marilyn Hacker, Jane Kenyon, and Mary Oliver, Bruce has given us another woman's voice we have to listen to!"
-- Julia Alvarez
