THE SHADOW OF GABRIEL'S WING

POETRY
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                               BY

                                   MICHAEL BRADBURN-RUSTER

                                               PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH

                                                             (YAVAPAI COLLEGE, USA)

                                                               

 

 

        Painting by Caspar David Friedrich,
'Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon' (ca. 1824)
             Cover Art by Ana María Calatayud 
           

                                            ISBN: 978-1-952799-09-9

 
          T
he poems in this collection arise from the vivid awareness that we are immersed in mystery. Dwelling in the shadow of Gabriel's wing, we are called to embrace the plenitude of miracle and melancholy that weave our lives. The cover painting of Gaspar David Friedrich intimates this spirit: two gazes - a man's and a woman's - contemplate and converge in a vision beyond themselves. A vast sky canopies a somber forest: at the penumbral verge of luminous and tenebrous realms, their surrender embodies the harmony of opposites - the present moment permeated by eternal presence, coalescence of the spiritual and sensual, the personal and universal, nature and culture, transcendence and immanence, the 'communion between the finite and the infinite' (Novalis).

         Marvels whisper to us at every step, interlaced with the sorrows that await us. Poetry seeks to melt the armor of indifference by which we strive in vain to flee from the sublime pulse of rhapsody and lamentation, where truth and myth, image and music, flesh and word coincide. 

 

 


 

FOREWORD

 

The Shadow of Gabriel’s Wing, Michael Bradburn-Ruster’s collection of poetry, makes me think of French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau’s painting, ‘Embarkation for Cythera.’ It is an invitation to travel through history and mythology, dreams and fantasy, soul and love. The Notes at the end of the volume reveal the acuity of the research that the poet completed while composing his pieces of creative work. There, Michael reveals that he is all at once an historian and a theologian, a phenomenologist and an archaeologist.

But above all, he is a magnificent poet. Rhythm and musicality, silences and echoes, guide us through the labyrinth of his artisanal, luminous verses, as Ariadne’s thread guided Theseus on his way back, after having killed the Minotaur. ‘Darkness sings,’ writes the poet. Maybe so ; nevertheless, the moon enlightens shadowy territories, as it does in Caspar David Friedrich’s painting, ‘Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon’ (1824), with which the poet chose to adorn his book’s front cover. References to German Romanticism are evident throughout the book, in currents of wit, humour, and the adulation of beauty. Bradburn-Ruster’s poetry furthermore reminds me of Friedrich Hölderlin’s, so much influenced by Ancient Greek poets Alcaeus and Asclepiades of Samos, and Novalis’, another German Romantic poet he quotes to qualify his own poetry : ‘The communion between the finite and the infinite.’

By many aspects, Michael Bradburn-Ruster, a mature man and poet, is ‘The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’ (1817), as depicted in another of Caspar David Friedrich’s  paintings.  In our terrible days of Covid-19 pandemic, Michael Bradburn-Ruster examplifies ‘The Function of the Poet’, as defined by French poet Victor Hugo in 1830 : ‘In such times gone awry, from far / The poet brings tidings of better days.’

ALAIN  SAINT-SAËNS
Poet and Literary Critic,
Corresponding Member,
Academy of Letters, Bahia, Brazil


 

 

   

MICHAEL BRADBURN-RUSTER

WITH HIS DAUGHTERS

SASHA AND ELIZABETH

   

MICHAEL BRADBURN-RUSTER

 AT

SAN MIGUEL DE ESCALADA

MONASTERY,

NOT FAR FROM LEÓN

(SPAIN)

 

   

 

Michael Bradburn-Ruster has published poetry, fiction, translations, and

 scholarly works in international journals. A frequent contributor to Poetry

 Salzburg Review (Austria) and Dappled Things, his work has appeared in Able

 MuseSacred WebJanus Head, Cincinnati ReviewBitter OleanderAntiphon (UK)

AllegroPrick of the Spindle, Grey Sparrow JournalEastown Fiction, Damazine (Syria)

, and Blue Lake Review. Since receiving his doctorate from UC Berkeley, he has

 taught literature, philosophy, comparative religions and mythology in California,

 Oregon, and Arizona. His book The Angel or the Beast (University Press of the

South, 1998) explores the interplay of philosophy, mysticism, theology and

 literature in the Spanish Renaissance.

 
 

The Angel or The Beast

 

                                 

    

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