Bruce Beasley has done what so few poets actually do: accomplish what they state their intentions to be. In mixing the scatological artwork of the 1990's with intense visionary threads from his life, the workds of others such as Flannery O'Conner, and theological ideas, Beasley creates a fine visionary volume of poetry. A volume that seems to be in constant dialogue with the art it is relating itself to and the poems themselves.

From seems to slide in and out as the poems shift between abstract throught and poetic reflection. An excellent book.

This book of poetry is for the reader who likes a challenge--who is willing to explore the sacred and the profane togetherunflinchingly as they emerge in art, scripture, and daily life. It isnot for the faint of stomach. Beasley explores contemporary issuessuch as the ... Christ, the male and female body, genetic cloning,and the return to form in poetry-- using langauge that is at timesdelicate and sensitive and others graphic and specific.

If you area risk taker, if you are at times meditative and at others fiercelyhungry to question assumptions-- this book is for you. Beasley is anintense questioner-- and he as a poet is constantly being transformedas a result. If you do not question, if you cannot accept paradox, ifyou cannot tolerate the blurring of the boundary between whatconstitutes a sign and what mutatates a sign into an abomination--then this book is not for you.

The opening poem is a meditiationon John the Baptist-- in many religious works of art, John the Baptiststands in the corner, looking intently towards the viewer of thepainting. While everyone else looks at the center of the scene-- beit Mary, Jesus, Joseph-- John the Baptist looks away. Beasley isfascinated with this apparent contradiction-- John the Baptist seemsto be saying, "look at me," inviting the viwer to make eyecontact-- but then also says, "Look away, I'm not what you aresupposed to be looking at."

This simultaneous invitation andrebuke frames the rest of the poems. We are invited to explore, tomeet the gaze of the mad prophet-- yet at the same time we arefrightened. We want to look at the images presented -- the ...Christ, the male female body, the virgin-- the way we have alwayslooked at them. To meet the invitation is to be transformed. We areseduced and then repelled as we realize what we are doing; then we areseduced again with Beasley's lyric intensity and fast furiouslanguage.

There are many interconnected themes in the rest of thepoems: of birth, of renewal, of life, of death. One of the moststriking poems is a mutated villanelle-- where the speaker of the poemmuses on the obsession of the mad scientist Seed who wants toimpregnate his wife Gloria with his DNA-- Beasley takes the tradional,obsessive form of the villanelle and lets it transform into a totallynew form. Whether the result is a mutation or transformation, a signor an abomination-- that lies with the reader.

Beasley is truly amaster poet-- he experiments with form, content, truth, sacrilege, andinpiration to give us a book that will push, invite, rebuke, andtransform the reader. END

Individual collections of verse, as opposed to career-long surveys, are almost always loaded with deadwood: what the album critics call "filler." Of course, the poets don't write them as filler--but the muse is a hard taskmaster, and most poems turn out that way: skillful filler, maybe; but filler nonetheless. If a collection has three or four pages [or three or four POEMS] which are NOT filler, then that collection is by default one of the best of the year. Bruce Beasley's "The Creation" has TWO of the best poems published in the U.S. in the past decade--"The Creation of Eve" and, better yet, "Eurydice in Hades." These poems are full of images which communicate, rather than merely decorate, and contribute to a moving aesthetic and emotional experience, conveyed by a mature and deliberate voice. Come join Eurydice in Hades as she remembers "the smell of mudbanks on a flooded river / above, the slap / of laundry against stone, and willows shining in the churning water--" and, by implication, urges us not to forget to respect and enjoy THIS world while we are in it. [Beasley's first, out-of-print collection, "Spirituals" [Wesleyan, 1988], is also worth seeking out, though he has misstepped badly with 1996's "Summer Mystagogia."

In reading this I got the notion that not much effort was put into research, only money for seminars. The opinions are narrow and the author rarely has a discovery we haven't already heard. I do give him credit on making people aware of "concepts".

Many times the chapters contain the same information presented earlier.

Very outdated and will not be regarded as a "timeless classic".

For those new to JKD, this book is an excellent example by Jerry Beasley of what JKD is not. Beasley, a student of Joe Lewis (Lee student but never certified by Lee), shows step by step how to perform an art which is the antithesis to JKD. Great book exemplifying what's not JKD.

Martial arts scholar and teacher Jerry Beasley draws upon his many years of experience and expertise to provide a definitive study of the Bruce Lee jeet kune do, an effective and dramatic form of martial arts that combines both Eastern and Western fighting styles. Included along with a profusion of illustrations are interviews with martial arts masters who worked closely with Bruce Lee, including Dan Inosanto, Larry Hartsell, and Joe Lewis. The Jeet Kune Do Experience will prove to be a very welcome addition to any personal, professional, academic, or community library martial arts reference collection.

Bruce Beasley, whose previous collection "The Creation" includes two or three of the best poems published in the States in the past decade, has misstepped badly with "Summer Mystagogia." In too many of the poems here, Beasley has aligned himself with that seemingly endless stream of poets who want to testify to us about the trials and tribulations of being who they are: '60's confessionalism taken to its [I hope] farthest extreme. The logical extension of these "psychoanalyses in verse" is that currently in-vogue item, the poet's memoir [Mary Karr, Mark Doty, et al.], and both of these trends seem somehow connected to the awful "soul-baring" of television talk shows. This is not to say that flashes of Beasley's true talent don't show through: here's Persephone speaking after Hades' pomegranate has already won him temporary custody of her, his "bride": "[Hades] fed me /seeds that glistened red, he said / I needed at least that much / sustenance, reminder of earth. I needed / nothing but the hard realm of his body: / his ribs cold against my breast, / my tongue on the bones of his shoulders." This brief passage, in a mostly good poem "Primavera," shows Beasley performing at his not inconsiderable best: the irony of Hades' urging food upon Persephone, "for her own good," in order to hide his true intent; Persephone's unsullied virginity longing for exactly the consummation Hades himself is after; the sharply delineated imagery which is so much stronger and more vivid than the bald denotation of "erotic" fiction. Here and there, throughout the collection, Beasley gives us, mostly in longer poems full of flaccidity, short passages in which his true talent stands out. We can only hope that, with this collection, he will have "used up" his need for confessionalism and that, next time around, he will give us the truly delightful and unforgettable poems of which he is capable