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.

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

Wedding Bells!

I did the wedding thing 22 years ago and at my wedding were my dear college buddy, Arthur Cohen, and his partner Daryl Otte. So you can say it has been a long time coming but a wonderful day when Arthur and Daryl were married in New York City on July 24, 2011, the day same-sex marriage became legal in New York.

It was, as they wrote, a day fraught with potential disaster, "700+ Type-A gay couples with some serious pent-up nuptials-demand, 100 degree heat, a NYC bureaucracy that is being made by the mayor to work on a Sunday in the summer, and whatever the lovers-of-personal-freedom-but-haters-of this-particular-expression-of-personal freedom, have in store." Nonetheless, they hopped a shuttle from their vacation spot in Cape Cod and got hitched, well, without a hitch.

I was honored to honor their not-so-subtle request for a wedding poem. As one of the long-time married, I was moved by the thought of affirming, or re-affirming, long-time love.

Mazel tov, my friends.

Time and Tide

- for Arthur and Daryl

July 24, 2011

Gulls sweep the sky,

points of white unified in magnetic motion,

the way water glances, falls,

becomes waves.

Before they charted the tides,

the ocean knew -- already wedded

to the lip of sand, the way we were drawn to

the spark and shimmer,

pull and release.

We know --

still we want to name this,

chart the change and constancy of days and years,

stand and say we will, we still will,

we always will,

and kiss.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt, 2011

Walkin' the High Wire

Just back from two weeks of 24/7 poetry writing at Ragdale in Chicago. New projects, new poems, exhibition plans, more news to come. But for now...

Some of you know me as a poet. Some of you know me as the Executive Director of the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation that supports arts and culture in Philadelphia. A few of you even know me as both.

Well, this morning at the annual conference of Delaware Valley Grantmakers (along with Philadelphia's nonprofit partners) I came out as a poet, big time, when I had the privilege of kicking off the conference with a poem. They asked me and three other poets to respond to the conference theme, "Holding Together in High Wire Times." So of course, me being me, I started with some research on the definition of 'balance' which included "an object that is stationary."

I started thinking about whether, in the nonprofit world, the philanthropic world, or even our own lives, is that something we want to aspire to? Or do we just keep walking the high wire?

Balance

Find it the young men, their low-slung jeans

and unstrung shoes, shuttling down the handrails.

Above, the El expresses itself down Broad Street,

expresses us up to to the high floor hustle

where the window washer, swaying on his twin pivots

takes a swipe at clarity.

On 5th Street, she lifts the steel window shade,

sweeps the daybreak, dust swirling to the Centro rhythm

as the 47 spins its wheels through the Market,

awnings unfurled in the commotion of commerce.

No point of stillness in this city circus --

rapid transit of mass and weight and gravity

the push and pull that deflects our progress

diverts us with forces that are not enough

and too much, and we feel

too much and not enough, but stay anyway,

step out each day into air,

risk the fall, are carried away

ride this turbulent City.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt 2011

New Construction! New Website!

I admit there has not been too much poetry writing going on lately but I am jazzed to announce the completed construction of my new website: www.brandtwords.com .

Blogs are great and cheap and easy but not so good at showing multiple things at one time or keeping really important projects (like the Sage book) up front without posting them over and over.

The new site, designed by Liz Bradfield and Pelagic Design (poet, naturalist and stellar web designer), lets you see a bunch of poems and projects. You can even listen to recordings of two of my poems that have been set to music. (By the way, Pelagic has some artist friendly design rates -- get in touch with them for that new website or design project you have been putting off.)

The blog will keep on keepin' on every month or so but is now redesigned and accessed through the website. Check it out, click around, browse through some new poems, and let me know what still might need some tweaking.

Also happy to report that I will be heading back to Ragdale for another writing residency in late October to start a new project. Stay tuned!

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.