The End of Travel

Poetry. With crisp, elegant language, sharp wit and resonant images, Julie Bruck's new book gentles the largesse of life out of its many smallnesses. The way a straw buoys up in a can of pop, or a friend's dress holds her shape, even on its hanger: Bruck textures her poetry with a life "you could close your hand around." Bruck's is the urban world so many of us walk through, eyes closed. But Bruck's eyes are wide open, keen and collecting. With teeth and heart, she cracks open the ordinary to reveal life's love and loss, joy and fragility, its extraordinary fullness.

"A wise and eclectic poet, she faces so many things head-on, especially grief. At the heart of this book is a brilliantly-wrought elegy, unselfconscious, lucid and loving. These are poems that hurt and heal long after you've closed the book." Lorna Crozier"