Planetary Sway: Aphorisms for the Everyday Emergency, by John Bradley

Prose poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Just what is an aphorism? Is it a sentence or two bearing some undiscovered wisdom? Is it a fragment of a poem? A poem in itself? A short story or novel reduced to a footnote? Merriam-Webster says an aphorism is a concise statement of a principle; a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment. Well, yes, but it can also be a broken string from a mandolin. A miniature orchestra that could fit into a thimble. A sharp-edged pebble in your shoe. Take George Orwell’s brilliant aphorism about the anvil always breaking the hammer (It is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about). It feels like an Orwell essay condensed into fourteen words. It will linger in the brain for decades, appearing at unexpected moments. That’s the power of an aphorism.

Planetary Sway: Aphorisms for the Everyday Emergency explores, expands, and at times implodes this genre in the hopes of producing starlight (indoors and outdoors). Made to be read in a car, bus, subway, café, bathtub, or favorite stuffed chair, these aphorisms may stick to the reader’s fingers. Planetary Sway would make George Orwell bang his head on his desk. It would make Franz Kafka swallow a hard-boiled egg. It would make Gertrude Stein ride a camel through Kokomo, Indiana.

John Bradley’s aphorisms have appeared in Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Hotel Amerika, Kerf, Otoliths, and other publications. They also appear in two anthologies: Short Flights: Thirty-Two Writers Share Aphorisms of Insight, Inspiration, and Wit, Schaffner Press, and Short Circuits: Aphorisms, Fragments, & Literary Anomalies, Schaffner Press. Trancelumination, LowBrow Press, offers a book-length collection of his aphorisms. He is also the editor of And Blue Shall Rise Over Yellow: An International Poetry Anthology for Ukraine, Kallisto Gaia Press. The recipient of two NEA Fellowships in Poetry, he is a frequent reviewer for Rain Taxi.