SAGE is here! Buy the book!

Yes, it has arrived.  It has been quite a journey -- close to three years since I wrote the first poem.  Thanks for your enthusiasm, patience and undying support from all corners. 

You can get the final product by clicking here.  You then have the option of paying online and having it shipped or choose "pick it up from Beth" and email me to find a time to connect for hand-delivery by the poet.  Cash and carry works too!

Just to whet your appetite, here is one more poem selected from the "Summer" section, headed up with Claire Owen's stunning painting on the left.  Sometimes one bit of a found poem (below in italics) was enough to kick off its companion piece.  I send "Saffron' out to Linda Williams, exquisite chef at Ragdale and extrraordinary human being, who nourished me in so many ways while I was writing this book.

Saffron

Three.

The whole essence

is in the number.

“If I tell you…

   …the dream where I am walking through

   rows of crocuses, petals spread saucers,

   each offering three threads, three words.

“If I tell you three times…

  …how thousands fill the basket

  and still they are too light,  but how

  detached, bruised, heavy with scent.

“If I tell you three times, it’s true.”

  …how I search for three to pull

  from the tangle, three to swell with ink,

  three words that are not  I love you.

SAGE Sighting

I swear I am not making this up.

To your left, my ace design team from Art 270 who helped us navigate the complicated production and printing process for SAGE.

Art 270 guru Carl Mill (he's the one on the right) wholehearted took on our project as his poetry contribution of the year...along with his dog named...wait for it...Sage.

Good karma for sure!  Thanks Art 270!

SAGE Featured for National Poetry Month!

I am thrilled to share that the SAGE project is featured on the terrific "Library as Incubator Project" website today as part of National Poetry Month. Click here to see it!

SAGE would never have been imagined without the people and resources at the Lenhardt Library of the Chicago Botanic Garden. Leora, Ed, and Stace represent all that is inpiring about how libraries and librarians can be open to new ways to connect people to books. Even as we speak, they are getting ready to present "Rare Seeds, Creative Harvest: Artist Books Inspired by the Rare Book Collection", an exhibition that will feature not just the SAGE books but the process by which they came about. The exhibition opens May 18th. so any Chicago folks --check it out for me and report back! I'll be out in July with Claire Owen to teach some workshops.

Go out and say thanks to your favorite librarian!

Oh, and SAGE will be in our hands on Monday. Thanks for your patience and watch this space to get yours in the mail.

Invasive Biology

First, thanks for your patience as we wait for SAGE to come back from the printer. Thankfully, living in the nonprofit world has prepared me for troubleshooting on a budget! But really, it is AT THE PRINTER and it's not too late to pre-order a copy by emailing me here. These folks will get first dibs, hot off the presses in the next few weeks.

Last time, I wrote about how I write poems but didn't tell you that my real muse is Morning Edition on NPR right as the alarm goes off. More than a few poems have been inspired by that semi-awake state and an intriguing story on the radio. So with apologies to my friend and naturalist Liz Bradfield who will no doubt know that this image above is probably not the real English grass in the poem, here my somewhat abashed confession on this environmental conundrum.

Invasive Biology

I know I should be appalled

that English grasses are growing

in Antarctica --appalled

or at least alarmed -- how once more

humans have upended nature, bur

latched to pant leg, seed fallen

from the pages of a paperback last read

in a backyard in Surrey -- alarmed

or at least dismayed -- how tufts of green

cricket lawns dot this white island where

they decidedly do not belong -- dismayed

or at least concerned.

I should be appalled but instead I am

awed, mesmerized, uplifted -- how life

makes life wherever it finds itself,

the power of the faintest pulse.

How can I be dismayed when this is

what I want -- thaw in deep winter,

improbable color, the chance to inhale,

embed, enfold the exotic other.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt 2012

SAGE Sightings! Add Yours!

You know how once you get a thing in your head, you start to see it everywhere?

So I was playing Scrabble with my mom, looked down and there was SAGE. I swear I did not even re-arrange them. They just appeared.

There's someone in South Philly who tags SAGE on buildings. Keep an eye out and send a picture if you see it. And any other cool SAGE sightings! Email your photo here.

Which reminds me that it is not too late to pre-order SAGE which should be out in March. Just email me here to get your order in.

How (Not) to Write a Poem...

There is a reason I like to work in sets of poems tied together with a theme.

My day-to-day life is really not poem worthy.

But in between projects, like I am now, I do try to keep the poetic mojo going which is mostly an exercise in frustration. But I am part of this writing group that meets once a month so I have to come up with something, anything... unless I want to feel like a big, fat, poetry loser.

Take last month. I had finally made the first fire of the season since we have had a really warm winter here. And it looked nothing like the fire in the picture. The wood was too wet. I was too impatient to clean out all the ashes from last winter. And try as I did to channel my father's 'how to build a fire' lessons, it was pretty much a dud.

Maybe this could be a metaphor for something or I could write about my father or write about some other fire that was hot and sexy. So I tried to write something -- tried in different forms and from different points of view. And it was all bad.

But there was one line I did like along with the idea of things that come and go. So I wound up with this poem instead. Which maybe is not so bad.

kerf

name the space

left by the groove

of the saw

wood to dust

line defined

by emptiness

name what

exists only

as absence

singed kindling

curled into fire

then air

words inhaled

understand

quiet

empty place

at the dinner table

bed

the name

that escapes me

late at night

still holds

the image

of a face

what exists

in the cut

of the blade

disappears

when the pieces

fall apart

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt

SAGE- Pre-Order the Book!

At long last, we are getting ready to send Sage to the printer in the next month or so. Little did I know that actually writing the poems was only one step on this long, but gratifying, road to a finished book with my collaborative partner Claire Owen.

We've decided to tackle the printing and distribution ourselves partly because we are control freaks, partly because we are on a deadline for the May 2012 exhibition at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and partly because poetry publishing is such a crap shoot, even for a book that isn't four-color, an unusual shape, and based on an 17th century botanical reference book.

It would be great if you can email us and let us know if you are planning to buy a copy (for about $20) so we can figure out how many to print. We hope to have the book in hand by late March. You can email me directly here.

Sage moves from the innocence of childhood and spring (see the opening poem, Air, in my December 2010 post) to the realities of winter, aging...and regret. Here is the poem that opens the last section of the book.

Water

All the words we regret

rise on waves of our own heat,

gather in dark clouds,

suspended.

In winter, they fall.

Each unique --

the chilling remark,

the harsh denial.

They murmur outside

the bedroom window,

slick and treacherous

blocking the last way

out.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt