Bringing Back the Bones

The poems in Bringing Back the Bones are startling intheir inclusiveness, juxtaposing history, science, myth,and popular culture with a narrative thread that risesfrom memory. Groups of distinctively individual poemsalternate with long poem sequences that range fromone based upon the difficulties of genius to one thatcontemplates the wondrous things that literally fall fromthe sky to the tile sequence, a meditation on the desirefor permanence.

As Robert Cording, author of Against Consolationand Common Life says, Gary Fincke finds the wordsfor that lone, long labor of our lives that shapes who webecome and readies us for those moments when the"possibility of happiness/surprise[s] us.‘ He combinesthe empathy of Philip Levine for our ordinary livesand the thinking intelligence of Carl Dennis. His greatgift, like Levine’s and Dennis’, is the way he so casuallyconnects his own life to those worlds, his poems alwaysconvincing the reader with their intelligence, with theirsubtle wit and humor, and with their deep feeling asthey simultaneously strive for a history of permanenceand comically acknowledge our human failures.