The Drum That Beats Within Us

       The traditionof the poet warrior endures throughout human history, finding expression in theBible's King David, the Vikings of Iceland, Japan's Samurai, the Shambhalateachings of Tibet, the ancient Greeks and medieval knights. Mike Bond, anaward-winning poet, critically acclaimed novelist, ecologist, and war and humanrights journalist, is in the same tradition.
       Initiallypublished by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in City Lights Books, Bond has won multipleprizes for his poetry and prose, and now brings the multitude of his diverselife to his remarkable new book of poetry, THE DRUM THAT BEATS WITHIN US: Poemsby Mike Bond (Big City Press; November 20, 2018).
       Bond's poetrydances between reflections on the majesty of wilderness, the joys and sorrowsof love, and passionate expressions of life's greatest existential questions.Prefacing the book is Bond's insightful essay on why poetry is an essentialpart of cognitive awareness, "how we find meaning in the incomprehensible,beautiful, tragic and sacred mystery of life."
       Poetry, Bondnotes, has existed since our Paleolithic days, found not just in humans butalso in the songs of wolves and whales, and an imperative for everyone toenjoy. "Reading poems enlarges our personal awareness of life's exuberance, itsterrible destiny," he says. "To learn in our own lives from the visions ofothers."