Approaching Ice - Elizabeth Bradfield. Persea Books, 2010.
d n love the poems, right off, words I wld not prefer, but some I like. and do like the book as whole, libr card cataloging infrm subject not just as 'poems' but: exploration, Arctic & Antarctic. informed, researched, arranged. sequences amid other poems: re individual explorers chronologically ordered ~1820 to last poem woman explorer in 2002. and notes on ice, alphabetical definitions. attracted to the title, and the cover. ice.
previous (first) collection: Interpreted work.
www.ebradfield.com - founder & editor of www.broadsidedpress.org

Lost Alphabet - Lisa Olstein. Copper Canyon Press, June 1, 2009. ~ seen & shelved once before, last consbo, & d n like title? & d n m like cover: book design & some of the back copy from Copper Canyon. but so far I like v m everything Olstein writes. and the cover photo is moths and moth-eaten music, that's_ impressive. again, I like that this is a book whole, card catalog subject 'etymology'. this is a narrative, one sequence:
'An unnamed lepidopterist a lepidopterist! studies moths? —living in a hut on the edge of an unnamed village— is drawn ever deeper into the engrossing world of moths, light, and seeing. Structured as a naturalist’s notebook, suggestive of an ars poetica, four-part sequence of prose poems re the consequences of intensive study, the trials of being an outsider, and the process of metamorphosis ok actually, in detail: moths.
"I have learned to peer at specimens through a small crack at the center of my fist. It’s a habit herders use for distance: vision is concentrated, the crude tunnel brings into focus whatever small expanse lies on the other side, something in the narrowing magnifies what remains. At the table, my hand tires of clenching, my left eye of closing, my right of its squint, but the effect: a blurred carpet of wing becomes a careful weave of eyelashes colored, curved, exquisitely laid . . ."
previous (first) collection: Radio Crackling, Radio Gone.
in wh: 'Insert bird for sorrow.'
In the Meantime by Lisa Olstein [The Poetry Foundation]:
What seemed a mystery was / in fact a choice. Insert bird for sorrow.
What seemed a memory was in fact / a dividing line. Insert bird for wind.
Insert wind for departure when everyone is / standing still. Insert three mountains ...


hmm. birds for sorrow. birds, sorrow. I find I like picture of birds, I go towards books with birds on the cover. perused also another poetry volume from Persea (distr. Norton) that has bird on cover 'Anatomy of a Dead Bird II' by Joel Sager. Used by permission of the artist and the Perlow-Stevens Gallery.

Mistaken for Song - Tara Bray. Persea, 2009.
this one I do not like enough. and since will not keep, am noting here. do like how back cover looks like ahsata press galley ~ brown text on white ~ brown~sepia photogr of author looking down, I like the photo, how she looks. poems about mother dying when she was young, about self 'I want, I want' (like my appley girl 'and I want my skin to peel in one smooth curl' hmm? no it was better how did I), and recurring about birds I do like about birds.
but what the poems say, and the cadence, too obvious ~ for me ~ expected, easy, not what I find real, thought ~ or trust as.

How My Mother Died: My father shook the gun to get the bullet out. / He was a careless man, but only once. / I shouldn't linger on this, the road rising out of itself, / my father out on Pine Street in the dark, / down on all fours, trying to open up his face / with gravel, trying to get down to the tar mm / of what went wrong by making blood again.
that is sad. and the road rising, father trying to open his face, gravel, tar, down to the tar

Rain: Like a dark miracle, they sleep, 2am / at a truckstop outside Indianapolis: / my husband of three cities, three years-- / flycatcher, scrub jay, kingfisher; / our baby daughter, little chickadee, / pale wrinkle, my inkling. mm. / A motherless girl who now mothers, / I am loved twice, two orchids, two glimpses / of the afterlife, two clearwing butterflies, / two fox sightings—twice scraped, twice owned.

and a heron. you have me at 'heron', or 'river'. also 'green.'

Once: I climbed the bale of hay to watch the heron / in the pond. He waded a few steps out, / then back, thrusting his beak under water,/ ...
How is it for him, day after day, brittle legs rising / from warm green scum, his graceful neck curled, / damp in the bright heat? It's a dull world.
brittle legs rising his legs are brittle. sticks in water. a heron's walk very pick up sticks ~ knee bend knee bend (I think -?) it's amazing that it's happening in front of me, him walking like that.
... The heron stood / stone still on the bale when I returned. / And then, his wings burst open, lifting / the steel blue rhythm of his body into flight. / I touched the warm hay, hoping for a trace / of his wild smell, then cupped my hands over / my face—nothing but heat of fields and skin. his swamp smell.

starlings, meadowlark. wading boots. lake bird refuge. belted kingfisher. larkspur.

"wren, deer tick, creek noise."

Pelicans everywhere, like answers
to failed questions.

oh and she has a poem titled 'The birds are making me' and I like that, I like that a lot, but I am thinking "making me" like the undercover cop says about the guy he's watching who's figured him out. who knows who he is. 'He made me.' The birds made me.
her poem though:
The birds are making me: day by day, building me / with twigs and flecked notes / mistaken for song.