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The Harbormaster of Hong Kong

David Bromige

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A Sun & Moon title.

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When David Bromige’s selected poems, Desire, was awarded the Western States Book Award in 1988, Ron Silliman noted that Bromige had been "often writing beyond our ability to recognize how wonderful and witty his creations... because we were so struck by how true," and Charles Bernstein declared, "[his] hour has come—and it begins here."

But (as Bernstein well knew) the clock had started at least two decades earlier, when Bromige’s poems took the New American Poetry in unpredictable directions. While Bromige, like his mentor Robert Duncan, rejects "originality" in favor of a poetry of derivations, like Duncan also he stamps everything he does with his own traits—skepticism, slapstick, irony, impatience, passion, and amusement. Always evident are the scale and commitment of his oeuvre, to demystify and make language present in its personal, social, political relations, and celebrations. In "The Harbormaster of Hong Kong," when the raisonneur discovers there is no such functionary, and that he was entirely created by language, the terror and the euphoria encoded in these poems come into further focus, and we perceive that liberation is multiplanar, and that hilarity is a light head with dark roots.

Bromige’s 25 books have brought him international recognition and awards, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Canada Council. He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, The College of New Caledonia, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and at Sonoma State University, where he has been Professor of English since 1970.