Tirades and Evidence of Grace: Austin Book Award, 1991

The Tirades are just that, how tired we are of the personal, environmental and political atrocities that have infested the planet. The And poems are about relationships, love. Evidence is a hard look at things as they are. The Of section of the book is about the death of the parent. The Grace poems are a difficult grace--how light filters through even the darkest hours so courage shines in our souls no matter what. "They are snapshots of the soul." Andrew B. Preslar, Review of Texas Books "Like her grandmother and father, Bright was born into a world of books and has made a life collecting them, teaching them, writing them, and--for almost two decades now." Elaine Ayala, Austin American-Statesman "A metaphor--trance evolves into acute spiritual awareness in 'Urban Shadow.' The result of such a vision is not only a sense of personal terror but knowledge of what can kill the best in humanity: 'I think it has mass and is a tangible result of logic that shuts down the heart.' How terribly it does shut down, and how desperately we need poets who can endure the vision, sacrifice bliss, and strip vagueness from such an enemy that must be named if logic is ever to be overcome by its superior: the heart." Holly Hunt Cost, Small Press Photographs by Butch Hancock