Manspell-godspell

Sam Bradley's first English publication - his previous three books appeared in America - is a collection of powerful, exactingly wrought poems reminiscent in texture of Hopkins. William Stafford wrote of his work, `Much more than most poets writing today, he combines with admirable zest and immediacy his social awareness and his readiness to experiment in artful communication'. Etta Blum commented in `Poetry' (Chicago) that `intellectual strength, wide range of content and richness of language distinguish the poetry of Sam Bradley'. Sam Bradley writes of his `The compulsions of the spirit, the magic of the heart, for fair or fell, are always being manifest within life. The poet does not teach rather he delves into the spell of existence to feel it, to capture some of its quality, to see where it is tending. I suppose that the reader of poetry wants to go beyond his ordinary, normal psychic environment (itself a spell). As Jung says, "People measure their self-knowledge by what the average person in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them". The poet would expand the knowledge of what goes on in the human spirit. `I'm aware of mass man, but I'm basically stirred by what Charles Williams called `co-inherence'. I hope that the poems eventually reflect the idea that we take strength from each other, that our gifts grow as we give to each other.'