David Bromige - Academic Career

Academic Career

Leaving UC-Berkeley A.B.D., (All but dissertation), Bromige took a teaching position in the English Department at Sonoma State University in 1970. Then come seven books in two years. This is Bromige at an early peak. Ten Years in the Making began it. This book consisted of some of his early work, going back to 1960, work engagingly open to the merest reader. Then come selections from The Gathering, followed by poems from Threads. Next came Birds of the West, from Victor Coleman of Coachhouse Press in Toronto. This book consists of three sections: a journal of gardening and visitors; a section of more finished poems, filled with a landscape of Western Sonoma County; and a single, long poem written in sparse triplets to reflect a white-tail kite’s hovering flight.

Soon afterwards, Tight Corners and What’s Around Them was issued by Black Sparrow. Bromige has stated it was the most interesting to him of this clutch of books. “I was using a fairly familiar sort of sentence, in prose, with a last line that either boosted sales or fell flat as a flapjack. I didn’t care. Banal or brilliant, it made no difference in the world I was living in. Besides, sometimes the banal turned brilliant as I listened.”

He also did three pint-sized books about this time for the “Sparrow” series. In 1974, he also published a book of occasional poems, Spells and Blessings.

Bromige continued to publish prodigiously in magazines and, in 1980, published a book called My Poetry.

The 1980s started with a Pushcart Prize for My Poetry and ended with the Western States Poetry Award for his selected poems, Desire. In between, Bromige devoted himself to his wife and young daughter while carrying a full-time professor’s responsibilities in the English Department at Sonoma State University. He coordinated poetry conferences at SSU, published a collaboration with Opal Nations, wrote an analysis of Allen Fisher’s four-day residency at Langton Street in San Francisco, and was himself the subject of an issue of Tom Beckett’s The Difficulties. In 1990, John Martin, who had moved Black Sparrow Press to Santa Rosa, published Men, Women & Vehicles, a book of selected prose.

Bromige retired early from Sonoma State University in 1993, and he continued to publish and give readings. Tiny Courts in a World Without Scales, Brick Books, is a book of fifty short poems, showing Bromige at his droll and sarcastic best. He had fun with They Ate, a cut up from a turn-of-the-century detective novel, before producing A Cast of Tens (Avec Press). Each stanza has 10 lines but in each poem is distributed variously. The Harbormaster of Hong Kong (Sun and Moon) came next with many kinds of writing in it including a perfect sonnet. Bromige’s final book from the 90’s was Vulnerable Bundles, a limited edition of thirty, from Potes and Poets Press.

Missing teaching, Bromige returned to it part-time at the University of San Francisco, and he also began writing what would later be As in T as in Tether, which was awarded A Best Book of the Year (2003) recognition from Small Press Traffic. Bromige published Indictable Suborners and Behave or Be Bounced with dPress, Sebastopol, in 2003. For the past few years, Bromige had been collaborating with poet and dPress editor Richard Denner on 100 Cantos. Spade: Cantos 1-33 was published in 2006.

Bromige lived in Sebastopol, California. He died on June 3, 2009 of complications from diabetes.