Detached Palace Garden
by Harold Bowes

Description

Only a few poems into Detached Palace Garden—throughout which the voice of the poet is clear, consistent and guiding—readers may begin to sense they are not just reading, but, deeply, chanting.

Comments on Bowes’ prior volume, If Nothing Else:

“In Bowes’ poetry, clear, concrete images are presented without sentiment or metaphor, the poems’ impact comes from the conjunction of images and the surprising and sometimes sudden philosophical turns that they take in their final lines.  Ordinary things—cars, clouds, mirrors, hands—acquire, through the simple attention Bowes gives them, an intimacy and meaning that is easy to miss in ordinary life.” (A review in the journal Tinywords)

“Harold Bowes is a skilled practitioner in the art of the small poem.  Like a photograph taken on a whim, [these poems] pin down something that is at once very ordinary but also extraordinarily beautiful.  The strength of many of the short poems in this collection is to be found in the way in which a single thought or several thoughts interconnect.  This is a remarkable book that deserves a wide audience.” (Neal Leadbeater, Galatea Resurrects)

“If Nothing Else seems like a sustained showcase of the mind of man in middle age.  A mood of disciplined placidity is maintained.  Bowes’ craft is evident.” (A review in Whistling Shade)

Excerpt: