Bruce Bond began writing poetry when he was 5 years old. Now a professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas, the poet was published in the autumn 2009 edition of The Southern Review, a journal published quarterly by Louisiana State University.

Bruce Bond

The published poem, “Blaze,” is about a fire that destroyed part of his house when he was a boy.

Bond said it was mostly fact; his family’s house did burn while his father was away at his grandfather’s funeral. One discrepancy with real life: Only half of the house actually burned down, and it was the part being remodeled.

But to a little boy standing outside his burning house, it felt like the whole thing was ablaze, he said.

“It was very odd, and it was made worse that my father was away,” said Bond, who remembered having a broken arm at the time.

He wrote “Blaze” a year and half ago, when he was writing nothing but formal poems.

Bond said he wants his poems to go beyond their obvious subject and hopes they have more ambition than simply telling a narrative.

The Southern Review receives 15,000 unsolicited manuscripts each year, Bond said, and of that “slush,” the editors publish about 2 percent.

It is one of the only professionally edited journals in the Southwest, said Leslie Green, the magazine’s business manager.

“One of the things we strive for is to share pages with established and new writers,” she said.

Bond would be considered an established writer. He was a young man when his work was first published, a poem about a doctor’s visit.

“The poetry I am drawn to is often musically driven,” said Bond, who is also a guitarist.

Corey Marks, who has worked with Bond for nine years and is a poetry editor of UNT’s American Literary Review along with Bond, agreed that Bond’s poems are driven by a strong sense of music.  

Marks, a creative writing professor at UNT, said Bond focuses on form in his poetry and is conscious of the way a poem shapes itself into life.

He also said Bond uses image and strange, surprising and vivid metaphors. Each of his poems grabs people, he said.

Marks said he is “struck by how he [Bond] is a poet who pursues his work very hard.”

In his work as a professor, Bond said, he incorporates literature into his creative writing course.

“When I teach creative writing, I teach it as though I am teaching literature,” he said.

He said he believes part of the creative process is developed by what a person is reading.

Other writers who influence him include Louise Gluck, Robert Hass, John Donne, John Keats and George Herbert.

Bond also teaches his students prosody, the musical structure of language.

He has been a professor at UNT for 15 years and he is continually submitting his poetry to different journals.

He said he believes in the long traditions of poets and critics at Louisiana State University and has previously had several other poems published in the Review.

He also has seven books of poetry, another two written and one submitted for publication, plus a 10th book he is working on.

“The challenge is to make [poetry] into something that engages people on the emotional level,” he said.

RACHEL MEHLHAFF can be reached at 940-566-6897. Her e-mail address is rmehlhaff@dentonrc.com.