The Beaver Pond

Benjamin Rozonoyer is a linguistic mathematician working within the Pythagorean idiom where the geometry of sound is an acute beauty. His is a liberal art whose designs are fractal and phonetic. Benjamin's log-rhythms create nothing artificial as his sounds and words are bound to the intelligible, to the light of the eyes as they are washed by the Word.

In The Beaver Pond the detail with which he evaluates and chooses the notes to sing is reciprocal with his sounding of their meaning. The world rightly resonates with specificity in his eye and with a deft touch he is able to paint the scenes in colors we could not mix on our own. His abundant resourcefulness of language guides us out to see. Few poets that I have read can still make music with their poetry, or have the sensitivity to hear it in the words spoken in the world. Noise, messaging, self, spontaneity, and creativity drown the modern reader with a flattened language of function and flippancy. With Benjamin's collection, one may step out the door for a walk to the beaver pond taking for granted the beauty of the day even as he comes alongside and says "There...look, listen!"

While every poet is embedded in language, Ben has two native tongues (Russian and English) which give his "naming" a duality and vivacity of super-abundance. He may even be more at home with the sounds of words than a root definition and yet when the bird-song of his lines plies the ear it speaks of a land, the presence of another, a mystery, and an inherent tune. He looks and sees "an elegant means" of the beauty in the world. The lines in this book may be fragile and fleeting, like all of our songs, and yet the gift is in their sounding not their hoarding, their making and their praising. Ben, like the meadow lark, is faithful with the rich heritage of the melodies, re-membering them into the fellowship of the field, he can't help but sing from every stem and wire.

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