About Bradley's Simple Versions of Disaster

“…hits the eye and ear with a fresh view of life that even a poetry-hater can love… this delightful collection of poetic observations is more in the line of commentary than metaphoric musing, and the result is a remarkable wisdom that emerges from experiencing the disasters of everyday life.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“Jerry Bradley’s poems seem to give up their message readily to the reader, but then they keep ringing with the grace of their style and the ripples of their meanings. I think Bradley should be recognized as one of the charter members of the New Clarity School of Poetry.” —Richard Sale

Bradley writes poems about life’s emotional explosions and the psychic craters they leave behind. They are what good poems are supposed to be—emergency poems. He takes the familiar subject of modern living—marriage, Five Prevention Week, divorce, singles and sushi bars, the supermarket, McDonald’s, and even adultery in the retirement village—and show them to be the stuff of which miniature tragedies are made.

Adam and Eve

In his tyranny he named them all:
every fish and flyer fell into words
from the mouth they never knew.

And he came to terms with her too
and the dark stirrings that churned
into butter his biological bed.

But anxiety nagged,
and first sin hunted him
like the curious hound of doubt.

It was the guilt of love without
favor, servitude without chocolate and gems.

So if he was indeed the first mother
birthing his own bride
to trick himself out of paradise,

then he had no choice in his eyes
but to love his errant child
and her tolerant, betraying heart.

Imagination was the serpent from the start.