{"id":863,"date":"2022-09-08T13:42:45","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T17:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/?p=863"},"modified":"2022-09-08T19:05:26","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T23:05:26","slug":"why-we-chose-it-book-of-dolls-3-and-book-of-dolls-8-by-bruce-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/why-we-chose-it-book-of-dolls-3-and-book-of-dolls-8-by-bruce-bond\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Chose It &#8211; \u2018Book of Dolls 3\u2019 and \u2018Book of Dolls 8\u2019 by Bruce Bond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u201cBook of Dolls 3\u201d <em>and<\/em> \u201cBook of Dolls 8\u201d <em>by Bruce Bond were selected last autumn and published in Mid-American Review Volume XLI in 2022.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Something in MAR that we gravitate toward is the peculiar and uncanny. Work that tugs at our emotions on a deep human level and won\u2019t let go. In poetry we look for things that as editors and readers we can\u2019t get out of our head. Lines that we keep returning to long after putting the packet away. We love a poem that knows who it is and what it wants. The doll poems by Bond do a wonderful job at using repetition to bring a sense of movement and unsettling-ness to the piece, but also comfort. For our editorial staff, it was a deep and whole-hearted yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>-Megan Borocki&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI take them to my therapy session, \/ the one I have online. To my surprise, \/ my therapist is broken, arm here, foot \/ there, lonely head weeping on a chair.\u201d &#8211; From \u201cBook of Dolls 3\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I really admire how Bond makes the strange familiar in these two poems. In \u201cBook of Dolls 3,\u201d he characterizes the dolls as a kind of burden, though is closely connected with them, and it feels almost delightful that the speaker gives the therapist a doll. There\u2019s a strange innocence there, I think. In \u201cBook of Dolls 8,\u201d there is this sense of inevitability with this growing doll: \u201cSoon it will become a horror.\u201d which Bond follows up with, \u201cGo on, hold it,\u201d gesturing again to connection. There is a closeness in these burdens, and a strangeness that feels emotionally accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>-Michael Beard<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cImagine a real-time feed of the beach \/ so tedious with heavy objects it cannot \/ be imagined. Only suffered, held.\u201d &#8211; From \u201cBook of Dolls 8\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In comments shared among readers, Bond\u2019s use of surreal doll imagery\u2014to untether otherwise banal human experiences from the familiar, before bringing them right back to earth\u2014was met with high praise. I felt a keen pace and music in these poems too, speeding unrelentingly to weighty finishes. Dolls are the perfect catalyst for Bond\u2019s exploration of pain: these almost-human objects can be broken, made up, filled with whatever we wish, and exist utterly at the mercy of our imaginations. Bond\u2019s \u201cBook of Dolls\u201d poems ask that we imagine ourselves, too, with such customizability, able to rearrange, detach, and repair our broken parts, or fill ourselves with sand that we might live with a weight which feels truer to a life beyond our often ungraspable suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>-Samuel Burt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cBook of Dolls 3\u201d and \u201cBook of Dolls 8\u201d by Bruce Bond were selected last autumn and published in Mid-American&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[39,43,41,29,42],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-why-we-chose-it","tag-bruce-bond","tag-mid-american-review-2","tag-mid-american-review","tag-poetry","tag-why-we-chose-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":865,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions\/865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}