Thom Brucie, Apprentice
Lessons. Daniel's Vision Press, 2015. Paperback, 26 pages. $7US. ISBN: 978-0-9887094-2-3
“Apprentice Lessons,’ a chapbook written by Thom Brucie
(Daniel's Vision Press, 2015), is an interesting and unusual work of poetry.
The poems are very much of a piece, dedicated and in homage to Brucie’s mentor,
Virgil McLynn, a carpenter and house-builder. Brucie makes clear in these
laudatory, lyrical poems that McLynn was not only his mentor in his
professional life, but also with regard to his understanding of deeper levels
of meaning – moral, philosophical, and spiritual.
Most of the poems in this collection begin with a concrete
image, a description either of a tool of the trade or a technique required in
carpentry, and move to a higher plane, a relationship between tool or technique
and a significant life lesson. These are presented as Brucie learned them, but
also for the edification of the reader. For example, “Bent Nails” begins with a
brief instruction:
The trick
to pulling nails
lies in the
angle of the claw.
Hook the
claw onto the nail
and bend it
sideways,
one way,
then the other
The first stanza ends with “Virgil made me straighten them.”
Clearly, there is more to pulling nails than just yanking them out of the wood.
The poem completes itself with an implication about how one ought to address vicissitudes
in life as a whole:
I learned,
eventually, to keep my fingers
out of my own
way,
and I
learned to strike the nail square on,
like any
other matter of concern.
In another case, “A Hickory Hammer Handle,” Brucie moves
again from the specific – “Hickory makes the best hammer handle” – through a
comparison to a human body – “a hickory shows its age with scars/ and brags of
youthful energy/ in supple boughs” – to end with a plaintive “secret prayer
that/ my daughter and my sons might endure/ as I will not/ that wisdom pass to
them/ as sap to leaf.”
The poems in “Apprentice Lessons” convey in simple diction
Brucie’s commitment not only to his profession as a carpenter and his gratitude
to his mentor, but also to his desire to elevate the simplest tools and events
in life to a loftier and more penetrating metaphysical and existential
perspective. His tone is reminiscent of some of the deceptively plain works of
Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison. There is wisdom here, and the reader gets a sense
of the depth of Brucie’s thinking, the love and admiration for the perspicacity
of his mentor, and his desire to bring the noumenal aspects of existence into
the contemplation of simple phenomena. At times this effort appears a little
forced – in some poems, the shift from the specific to the general and
philosophical doesn’t quite hang together – but overall, this compilation is
quite satisfying, and sometimes deeply moving as well. In “An Honest Day’s
Work,” Brucie expresses it thus:
If a man
produces beauty
with his
handiwork,
that is
reason enough
to get out
of bed
every
morning,
and sleep
serves recuperation
not escape.
The world might well be a better place if we could all live
that way.
- James K. Zimmerman is a widely-published, award-winning
poet. His publications include Little
Miracles (Passager, 2015) and Family
Cookout (Comstock, 2016), winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Award.
