Earthquakes and Hurricanes

News for those of you who've been following the Sage saga! I just got an amazing mock-up of the book from my creative partner, Claire Owen, and now we switch to printing/publication mode. And look forward to an exhibition at the Chicago Botanic Garden in May 2012 of Sage and other related work. Put it on your calendar all of you in the Windy City.

Speaking of which, it has been a crazy week here in Philadelphia. First, a hail storm. Next day, a simultaneous flash of lighting and thunder that shakes the house...and there goes the electricity. I guess you heard about the rare phenom of an earthquake that became a Philly bonding experience up and down Broad Street as people relayed updates from their iPhones so we all knew we weren't crazy or suffering from collective vertigo. Now we wait for the rare Northeast hurricane.

I am not one for omens or cosmic messages but jeez...what's next... a plague of locusts? Clearly, someone is doing a meteorological mash-up and leaving us all stunned.

In the weather vein (small pun there, very small), I have been playing around with new poems now that Sage is in Claire's capable hands. A.V. Christie, my poetry mentor and provocateur (provocateuse?), challenged me to write a ten-line poem that was all one sentence. Well, I doubled that and considered the ways in which nature (and the rest of us) struggle, day-to-day to be our best selves...with varying degrees of success.

Flood Stage

When the Mississippi crests far above the flood stage,

it eventually floods itself back into its tributaries

and becomes one itself -- a tributary I mean -- no longer

the thing flowed into but the opposite of that,

so there must be a moment or more likely

an hour or possible a whole day, when waves meet

themselves returning from where they have just

been and, if they were us, they might recognize the curve

of a bank or a low branch and be surprised to find

that they have not made any

progress at all, despite

the swift churn of their efforts that, actually

are effortless since this is what a river is

meant to do -- flow I mean -- except now

in the extreme, which is when we show

what we really were all along and maybe

we are not all singsong majesty but something

else entirely that we can mostly contain and even,

most days, make some good out of, which surely

outweighs the days when the currents

overwhelm us.

Visual Poetry for Sale!

I am so proud to announce that the broadside of "Sage" is now available for sale through Turtle Island Press. You can see a larger version of the print on their site by clicking on the image to the left.

The broadside, an 11"x 14" limited edition digitally printed with letter press type, is the first fruit of my creative collaboration with artist Claire Owen.

Two summers ago, I was in a writing workshop and met Claire, a book artist whose work I had admired. Being a poet has made me bolder than I used to be, so after the class was over, I emailed Claire and went out to her studio which is a mini-museum of paintings, hand-bound books, and natural artifacts tucked into a Victorian home in Mt Airy.

This chance meeting has turned into full-grown collaboration. We are hard at work on our artist book combining my poems and Claire's images, including this poem and 20 others. In the meantime, Claire has created a subtle interpretation of Sage in this elegant print.

The print is in a signed and numbered edition of 30 of which about 20 are still for sale. Prints are $75 and can be purchased by emailing me here. Purchase can include hand delivery by the poet if you live in Philly!

Considering I usually spend my creative time alone with a blank notebook, collaboration is totally energizing!

Take a look and post up your comments below to let me know what you think.

Mother's Day

As Mother's Day winds down, I thought of a poem I wrote (another in the "Darwin" series) that was based on a photograph of my great-grandmother and great-aunts taken in Russia sometime before the turn of the last century.

A few years ago, my sisters, our daughters, and nieces had gathered for my mother's birthday and I had written this as a birthday gift for my mother. Although I didn't know it then, it was also the last time I saw my dad before he passed away.

With love and appreciation for all of the women in my life, mothers and others.

Long-lost characters

In the heirloom photo, three women pose,

sepia and close-mouthed, enduring

bad teeth or a grim Kiev winter.

The matriarch, whose name no one remembers,

wears a white knotted head scarf

and clenches her right hand in her lap.

Rose, slim-waisted and straight-backed,

challenges the camera.

Her sister, Miriam, in high-collared black,

looks aside.

They all have our eyes.

What would they make of us,

their great-greats and their greats,

with our bared bellies and loose-limbed androgyny,

our husbands and wives who came here

from not here and found us to love,

our bilingual babies,

our speed-read Seders and Easter baskets

and Christmas trees in the living room.

We are the ones who return to the house

our father built, amazing him each time

with all the women he has spawned.

In the backyard, we snap ourselves,

bountiful and large, our heads

blond and dark and grey,

leaning together, laughing at Zoey

swatting her mother’s dangly earring,

smiling our wide white American smiles

at our great-greats and their greats,

posing for the story they will make of us.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt, 12/7/2007

Want to get in touch? Email me here.

Maybe Spring

Exciting news on the collaboration front. The broadside print of Sage with artist Claire Owen is being proofed as we speak. We should have it in hand in a month or so, and it will be for sale on Claire's website, Turtle Island Press.

But in the meantime, something old/new...

While poking around my parent's bookshelves a few years back, I came across a copy of Darwin's On the Origin of Species that had belonged to my grandmother. On the flyleaf was written her maiden name, Sadie Kesselman, 1919. Each page had a heading that extracted some important phrase from the chapter.

I wrote a series of poems with titles drawn from these page headings -- things like "The Importance of Barriers" or "Long-Lost Characters." This was my first foray into a body of work that shared a theme, a process which has proven to be a consistent way of working for me.

Recently I was looking over some of these poems and found this one from 2006. After a roller coaster week of snow, 80 degree weather, and violent thunderstorms, this one seemed fit for the season.

I also send it out to my daughter, born on the Ides of March, a young teenager when I wrote this, now turned 20.

"Effects of Climate"

The pendulum sun swings further

each day, gives way to gravity

and lands back home by dinnertime.

Spring wears me out.

All that potential requiring constant vigilance.

As if it's my job, my responsibility

to see each leaf, each blade of grass,

safely to the solstice.

March takes and gives -- the way

nursing a baby leaves you sated

and drowsy and ravenously hungry

all at once.

We are guardians lulled by new warmth,

caught unprepared when the sun burns

with hot June adolescence.

What did we know of this --

late snows, growling thunder, false spring.

How could we have known all it takes

to grow a canopy of green?

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt 2006

Want to be in touch? Email me here.

Provenance

Anyone who has watched "Antiques Roadshow" knows that it is not really the object that has value but its provenance. Value depends on where that object came from, who owned it, or its presence at some notable event in history, all carefully documented.

I am telling you this for a reason.

For those of you who are following the progress of "Sage", my collaborative book of poetry with artist Claire Owen, you know that this work is based on John Gerard's "The Herbal, or General History of Plants", 1633 edition. I was reading through the many introductory sections which give credit to generous donors (yes, that was the same in 1633) and include a section that describes the update of the 1633 edition by Thomas Johnson of the original 1597 Gerard text.

While slogging through the Olde English typeface and 's's that are written as 'f's, I realized that Johnson was accusing Gerard of stealing most of the work in this book from an earlier Herbal. I checked with my favorite Chicago librarian Ed Valauskas, who confirmed that, while taking past work from another scientist and building on it was an accepted practice, doing it without giving proper credit was pretty much plagiarism even back then.

So had I based my whole book on a stolen text? And more importantly, did it matter?

This poem won't be in the book but considers the question of provenance and how much we care about what was, rather than what is.

Provenance

No clear lines

of history or family,

of sale or charity,

or theft.

There are gaps

in ownership, questions

of judgement, disputes

over value.

What you see,

spot-lit and sacred,

may not be

what it claims

to have been,

but only

what it is.

No reason

to hold dear

except the depth

of blue, the flow

of line, the balance

in this moment,

in the next.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt 2010

Want to be in touch? Email me here.

Air

Back from a two-week residency at Ragdale, an artist's retreat outside of Chicago. Pretty cold outside, but filled with warmth inside. I wish everyone could have the chance to spend two weeks doing what they absolutely love, surrounded by others who totally get why you love it. Plus beautifully-prepared food, good conversation and a fireplace. What a gift.

Sage, my current poetry project grew wildly while I was there. People talk about the "Ragdale effect" through which you create a year's worth of work in two weeks which is pretty close to what I was able to do during my residency.

A big accomplishment was writing the four poems, one for each element/season, that will define the four sections of the paired 'herbal' poems. (Check out the November Sage blog post for more info on these.)

I know it's really winter but here is the Air poem that will head up the Spring collection of poems. I am not a big cold weather person so let's remember light and green -- and consider all the ways we can open ourselves up in the coming year.

Air

Fills her lungs, overflows

to the space around her heart, her throat,

the cavity behind her eyes. Inside

the motion of molecules, her edges

diffuse to a bouyant clarity.

It is spring. The trees exhale their green

lifeblood as she folds into the mist

that cycles from ground to sky.

Through dark blue nights,

she courts the constellations--

Aries, Virgo -- held weightless

within their virtues. Nothing

to collide with, nothing to hold on to,

no way to come down.

Beth Feldman Brandt (c) 2010

And if you really want that winter feeling, check out my fellow Ragdale resident Michael McColly's very cool blog here.

Want to be in touch? Email me here.

VOTE for (My) Poetry

VOTING CLOSED! Thanks to everyone who cast their vote, tried to cast their vote a few more times, told their friends, tried to vote a few more times. It looks like "Fault Lines" finished a strong second. The winner was a 12 year old girl from Chile. How cool is that? Keep checking out the Broadsided Press site, become a vector, help get poetry into unusual places! Thanks again to all.

My poem, 'Fault Lines', is a finalist for the Haiku-Year-in-Review (HYIR)- Winter Season sponsored by Broadsided Press. The winning poems (one for each season) will be combined with visual images and posted as broadsides on January 1. People like you all over the world, known as 'vectors', print and post these broadsides every month.

Poets were invited to write haiku that responded to one event over the past year. My poem was written in honor of my brother-in-law, Ed Nelson, who helped manage the phone banks in Miami's Little Haiti as people tried to find their families after the earthquake.

Fault lines crack, crumble,

swallow cries crossing oceans.

Calls go unanswered.

So if you are so inclined, go to Broadsided Press and vote for a poem to represent each season --maybe even mine for Winter--and become a vector while you are it at! Just remember, unlike in Philadelphia, you can only vote once!

Thanks!