Our RBG Story...and a poem

A few years ago, I learned that the mother of a friend of ours had been at college with RBG - one of the five Jewish girls housed in the same hall at Cornell - and they remained lifelong friends.  Our buddy had the opportunity to go to the Supreme Court now and again, sit in RBG's box and go into her chambers so these two dear friends could visit.

On one of these visits, our friend hand-delivered to RBG a thank you letter and two pictures from our wedding.  One of the two of us beaming and another surrounded by the dozens of family and friends who shared our joy.  In our letter to her, I wrote that we were so grateful not just for the opportunity to celebrate and recognize our love, but also for the rights we had long been denied.  A mix of emotion and pragmatism that maybe made her smile.

So in gratitude and celebration of how one person can make a difference in the world -- may her name be a revolution.  Stay safe.  Stay well.  Onward.

wedding poem

an altar waits    us to receive

blessings or a prayer      tonight we

choose faith in each other           

divinity as we make it        how

Eden was bounty all along   then

found       i am not one to tend

gardens      tend instead to cultivate

half-stories     eve without the apple

inventions and veracity

juxtaposed           but you

know how to read each

line            the poem we made

manhattan in January

   no tourists in st. patrick’s   faith

        once removed    

piety as we know it   belief without

question      overlook the looks of the

righteous            instead we

save ourselves    we are each other’s rescue

toss me a line    we will be poems

universes turn         spin

veer off the highway          slow drive

where trees are the canopy of our

x-ing            where ahead            

years wait            overhead the stars

zenith                   bless us

 

© Beth Feldman Brandt

February 2018

Sanctuary

I am not a winter person but oddly, I find comfort in knowing that the first day of winter means that the days will start getting longer.  Minute by minute, we stretch toward spring.

But at this season, it is hard to live with knowing how many families are without comfort and joy.  Though this poem and the sound piece that accompanies it was published last year by Apiary magazine, the incarceration of families, separated or together, continues.  While Javier was able to safely leave his sanctuary at the Arch Street Ministry as he awaits his visa, others remain in churches and jails. It is a poem I wish was no longer relevant but sadly, remains a call for justice.

Wishing all who seek it, sanctuary and peace.

You can listen to the sound poem here..

Sanctuary

Late November and winter is just starting its long march.

Days darken, more time to live in the shadow of what we fear. 

Encircled in forest, a buffer from the highway’s hum,

these acres named sanctuary, refuge, oasis.

The pond is mirrored with ice.  Life underneath suspended.

Doe and fawn.  Hard to feel safe when hunters shoot for sport

or profit, steel bow and an arrow of cross-weaved carbon,

essential element of life, and who knows if hunters believe in

boundaries they can’t see.

Outside the City of Brotherly Love, Margarita Alberto

and her six-year old son have been detained, asylum denied,

incarcerated for 328 days for the crime of fleeing El Salvador

without enough documentation of their victimization.

Now they are victims here.  Each one turns a profit for those

who contain them behind a split rail fence even her son could scale

but better to mind this border than be sent back, this time

leaving her son behind.  This time, marked as one who fled.

Javier Flores claims sanctuary at the Arch Street Methodist Church,

deported more than once but crossing over to be with his family

again and again.  The Book of Numbers names sanctuary cities but

Javier is not the one who needs forgiveness.

His life is suspended.  His family brings food from the outside.

ICE waits on Broad Street. 

His borders are the sanctuary walls, sun through the stained glass,

a kaleidoscope of angels floating above the stone floor.

Beth Feldman Brandt 2017

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Listen to RetroLove Interview and a Prize-Winning Poem

In a cool convergence of my writing and performing lives, it is now National Poetry Month and Philadelphia Jazz Month which is a perfect time for an interview by PhillyCAM with a sneak preview of the soon-to-be-released RetroLove album.

PhillyCAM is people powered media including a community media center, TV station and   FM Radio Statio. Listen here to my interview (which starts around 10 minutes in) and hear some smokin' hot tunes with Monnette Sudler, Joilet Harris and the RetroLove band.

In other exceptional news, my poem Fire was chosen as the winner of the  Philadelphia Writers' Conference Spring Forward poetry contest!  This garners me a partial scholarship to the conference, a slot as a featured reader and some much needed inspiration for some new poetry after RetroLove.  You can read more about the award and the conference here.  All of which goes to prove that sometimes you can master something really scary...by writing about it.

Fire

Only a small fire but not where fire should be—

            the wick of a candle, hearth, heart—

                        a fire uncontained, unattended.

I was reading.  Of course, I was reading,

            and making tea which I had forgotten.

                        It was a good book.

No doubt I put the sound of the fire crackling

            into the story I was reading, the way

                        you put a ringing phone into a dream.

Crackling—sometimes the cliché, a crackling fire,

            is true—fire sounds like snapped branches

                        or crumpled drafts of a bad poem.

Curious at the sound, now loud enough

            to pull me from my book in which

                        I carefully marked my place.

Fire on the stove.

                       

How to douse it? A word I use now but then

            only out or just the desire for the fire to be out

                        because I am sure I had no words

when the fire inhaled, doubled,

            spilled toward me, skimmed across

                        the inside of my arms

as I lifted the thing that burned.

Then it was out. Extinguished.           

            Sodden in the kitchen sink.

I wonder now when I would have chosen

            to abandon the kitchen.  The house.

The book with the dog-eared page.

How high would the flames have needed to be?

            How intense the heat, angry and consuming?

                        Or a child I needed to save?

Fire. Slur. Scuffle. 

            One small thing.

                        Fueled.  Repeated. Escalated.

Fight the fire or flee.

            And no time to take anything

                        with us.

                       

© Beth Feldman Brandt, 2017

Just Announced! RetroLove at World Cafe Live (Watch a Preview)

If you missed RetroLove in June, want to see it again (and bring your friends), or have always wanted to visit Philly, here is your chance.  Tickets are now on sale for  Sunday, February 12th at 5:00 pm (doors open for food and drink at 4:00) at World Cafe Live, the coolest of the cool Philly clubs.  Watch this trailer and see just a taste of the show.

Still to come, RetroLove: The Album and if you are in the mood to snuggle up with some warm words, you can still buy RetroLove: The Book.

Meanwhile, I am heading to Ragdale, an artist retreat in Chicago to see what poetry is lurking post-RetroLove.  I will report back.

WANT TO RETROLOVE? GET THE BOOK!

Wow!  Two sold-out houses and standing ovations for RetroLove: The Show here in Philadelphia thanks to Philadelphia Jazz Project and my stellar collaborators Monnette Sudler and Joilet Harris.

I have to say that I was more than a tad nervous to make the leap from page to stage but it was so gratifying to feel the audience join us on this RetroLove journey.  Stay tuned for an upcoming video and record (!) thanks to PhillyCAM and Turtle Studios.

In the meantime, if you loved the show or missed the show, you can make your own RetroLove happen by getting the book.   (There is a bonus poem or two that were not in the show.)  RetroLove is about being in that retro moment but also looking back, with kindness, for our younger selves.

If you RetroLove it, you can buy the book here.  Thanks to Greenleaf Poetry Press and Deidra Greenleaf Allen, publisher and designer extraordinaire.

In My Life

I wake up early.

  I used to love to sleep all day,

  now I love the highlighting behind the trees

  and the quiet when even the dog is asleep.

I miss midnight.

I make my tea steeped from loose leaves

  with the last tiny bit of honey

  in the jar from the farmer’s market --

  even when it’s hard, it is still sweet.

I miss dark coffee at midnight.

I listen to the morning news as I

  brush my teeth and sometimes in the mirror

  I look like a different person,

  but not half bad when I smile.

I don’t miss the ‘feed me, get dressed,

  don't forget...I missed the bus.’

I don’t rush out the door like I used to.

  I have more time -- and less.

I wake up early

  so I can curl myself around you

  say wake up, it’s a new day, baby,

  a gift.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt 2016

RetroLove goes live!

RetroLove is rockin'!

RetroLove: The Book is on the way to the printer and dates are set for RetroLove: The Show.

Monnette Sudler, Philly's first lady of jazz, is the composer and Music Director.  Actor/singer Joilet Harris is ready to take you to all kinds of retro moments.  Add a hot jazz band and we are on our way.

You can pre-order the book and buy tickets to the show on June 29th and 30th at the newly renovated Drake Theatre in Philadelphia.  Plus read a cool interview about the show at Philadelphia Jazz Project.

Check it out on my new website.  Oh yeah.

My Poems in Haiku-Year-In Review 2015

I am so honored to be chosen again for inclusion in the Haiku-Year-in-Review by Broadsided Press. Print it.  Post it in your favorite coffee shop, over the microwave at the office, on a bus shelter.  My haiku, heartbreaking and heartfelt, focus on the Charleston Shooting and the Syrian refugee crisis.

Read the poems here, as well as brief a tribute to my aunt, Pat Komarow whose full, but too short, life inspires my daily haiku practice

RetroLove in Apiary Magazine Online

RetroLove is featured in this month's Apiary magazine online -- "Writers with Soul"!  A shout-out to fellow poet, Monique Gordon.  You will love her words.

SAVE THE DATE:  RetroLove: The Show in conjunction with Philadelphia Jazz Projects is booked for June 29 and 30, 2016 at the brand new Drake Theatre in Center City Philadelphia.  The incomparable Monnette Sudler as Music Director.  Stay tuned as we get closer but save the date!

Watch and listen! Wind Rose!

Thanks to Andrew Litts, the Temple University New Music Ensemble, and soprano Peggy Pei-Ju Yu for their stellar performance of three movements of the "Wind Rose" song cycle. The performance includes "Among Mountains"; "Why Not" (3:50); and "Aqua Alta (6:07).

The full song cycle, inspired by the Italian names of the "wind rose" compass, traces a woman's journey.  Whether it is real or imagined is left to the listener to decide.

Take a listen!

Wind Rose Poems/Music at Temple on December 7th!

Some of you may remember the Wind Rose poems I was working on a few years back, inspired by the wind compass Italian sailors used to navigate their journeys.  I wrote these specifically for composer Andrew Litts to set to music in a full song cycle of nine poems.  Andrew and I collaborated on Transmutation, performed by Network for New Music as part of the "Dialogues with Darwin" project.

I am very pleased to invite you Philly folks to hear three of the songs to be performed by Temple University's New Music Ensemble on Monday, December 7th at 7:30 at Rock Hall.   I have listened in on the rehearsals and it promises to be an exceptional performance.

To whet your appetite, here is one of the poems that will be performed.  This poem is inspired by the southeast sirocco wind that causes the flooding in Venice. I hope you can join us to hear these words come to lyrical life.

Acqua Alta

-  sirocco (SE)

she dreams the river rises and instead of sinking, she rises with it, 

her red leather shoes make small islands, shoe-shaped ripples,

as she strolls the street which is her street,

the neighbors, her neighbors, framed in their square panes,

paintings entitled, ‘waking’ or ‘brushing her hair’,  remarkably still –

and it is easier than she would have thought,  to walk on water,

where the tree limbs begin their reaching out, and the birds weave

around her ankles like housecats, and from here she can see 

her own house, her own room, a figure at the edge of the bed – 

on her desk, crisp white paper, her pen overflowing with words.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt, 2014

Well, we saw plenty of the Pope here in Philadelphia this weekend but sadly, none of the mega-supermoon lunar eclipse.  How about you folks in other parts of the world?

For those of us who missed it, a poem I wrote many years ago during a chilly winter lunar event -- the triangulated dance of sun, earth, moon.

Lunar Eclipse

slide between the gold that is you

the cold that is everything else

dim the snow-mirrored

night light

soften the tangle

of bare branches

lick at the edges

like icing from a cake

curl around my back

and hold me there

our warmth spilled

on the ember moon

clouds of our misted breath
mingled with the red stars

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt 2008

Final Hurrah! Last Day of the 5-Day Poetry Challenge

Thanks to everyone for coming along on the Cape May poetry raid every morning and for sending your beach-warm comments.  Glad you enjoyed our beach sojourn together.  Here is the last of the seawall poems...

on the night
of a new moon
high tide meets
the Milky Way.

And for my last poet tag, I pick Ryan Brandon, a young poet with things to say.

Random Acts of Poetry-Day #4

Winding down the 5-Day Poetry Challenge on a cool beach breeze kind of day.

ocean smooths 
the sea bed
palms brush
the sandy sheets

Looks like we might have a rainy day here tomorrow morning so if you haven't checked out this 30-second poetry on the sidewalk walk, that will be your video poem for tomorrow.  No one said it has to be 5 consecutive days of poetry!

And for day #4, I tag my performance mentor and dear friend, Julia Lopez.

Random Acts of Poetry-Cape May Day #3

Day 3 of the 5-Day Poetry Challenge

wave wish breath
on your skin
at night
you dream of rain

Monday's poem is faded...Tuesday's is on its way.

Take a video poetry walk with me here.

And today I tag Haiku ninja, Sarah Martinez-Helfman!

Random Acts of Poetry in Cape May-Day #3

Random Acts of Poetry Day #2!

It's Day 2 of the 5-Day Poetry Challenge and I headed out to the seawall again with today's poem.

swallow the sun
filled, open-mouthed
against the darkness

A few people stopped to read it.  One person asked me if that was also my poem from yesterday, a bit faded but still there. One very fit jogger guy read it out loud as he ran by and said, "Cool."

Today, I am tagging Eugene Skeef, a London-based, South African-born poet, musician and inspiration.  We crossed paths many years ago and reconnected recently.  I am grateful.

Heading into the sunshine.  Filling up for the winter.

My Random Act of Poetry in Cape May

Kicking off my favorite two weeks of the year in Cape May with an early morning guerilla raid at the end of the seawall -- the spot where runners, bikers, strollers, finish their walk and turn back toward town.

soft with the weight of blue
sky reclines on the horizon
                      
Think I will use this for Day 1 of the 5-Day Poetry Challenge put to me by my mentor A.V. Christie.  Post a poem, tag a poet.  Denice Frohman -- tag, you're it!  Let's get some spoken word in the challenge mix!

Back to the ocean -- aaahh.

Summer Poetry Books-Summer Sale!

If you are busy tending your tomatoes or harvesting your herbs, you might be in the mood for some nature poetry from my books, Sage and Solace.  

Sage is inspired by a rare book from 1633 that catalogued all the plants and their "virtues".  Solace is a tribute to Philadelphia's own Bartram family, American's first botanists, as part of the 2014 exhibition "Bartram's Boxes Remix."

Order Sage here or Solace here (or both)!  Click on "Pick it up from Beth" and I will ship it for free.

Just the thing for some nature moments...perhaps with a nice cool drink...and air conditioning!

Wishing you all a beach-filled and creative summer!

Choose Your Own Poem Adventure!

For the past few months, I have had the good fortune to be in a writing workshop with poet extraordinaire Daisy Fried.  I've used this time to experiment with how many ways I can re-invent poems with sound, drawings, field guides and a few other investigations.

Do you remember "choose your own adventure" books? Start anyplace you like on this sheet.  Follow the arrows.  Go backwards.  Forwards.  Repeat if you like.  End where you think it should end.

Write your own poem and share it in the comment box if you are so inclined!  Have fun!

Save the Date! New RetroLove at Fergie's Pub on July 8th!

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Reading at the Free Library this Saturday!

This coming Saturday, April 18th, is Philly Poetry Day. If you feel like strolling the Parkway, stop by the Free Library Central Branch at 3:30 to hear me and some of my fabulous poetry buddies for a round robin of words:  Alyson Shore Adler, Deidra Greenleaf Allen, Minna Canton Duchovnay, B.E. Kahn and Barbara Russell.

Or join in with a poem of your own.  All are welcome.

Read more about Philly Poetry Day here!

And exciting RetroLove news is in the offing-- stay tuned.