Post by shayepoet on Jun 3, 2008 6:57:45 GMT 2
Season We Can't Resist
Martha Carlson-Bradley
Martha Carlson-Bradley is unflinching in the way she examines the weight and wonder emanating from each leaf, each spore, shadow, and cry in the world we live in, and the human meanings we bring to such things: metaphoric, sexual, scientific, mortal. Season We Can't Resist is a bold book, full of wit, and verve, and beauty."
-- Jane Brox, Clearing Land: Legacies of the American Farm
Sample poem:
Phalloid
In Latin, it's phallus impudicus;
in Anglo Saxon, stinkhorn.
And what would Cotton Mather say
spying the fleshy, white egg in the woods
as the penis emerges--shaft, glans, meatus--
the head green and sticky and reeking of death,
coated with spores the flies carry off--
and the mushroom, stripped clean, shrivels.
It is not--we know it's not--
a message from hell,
that faint gleam in the fallen leaves:
it's nature recycling form
and function--something we assumed
was human, and private
aroused in the dirt.
First published in Beloit Poetry Journal
Reviews for Season We Can't Resist:
"Carlson-Bradley … writes as directly and meticulously about nature and its wonders as any writer you'll find. … What can close examination of the natural world tell us about ourselves? A lot. Carlson-Bradley affirms this in poem after poem."
—Rebecca Rule, Sunday (Concord, NH) Monitor tinyurl.com/4kjou3[/i]
"Season … is a miracle of language and observation. … You can walk through these poems like a forest; you can lose your own body in the bodies of the mushrooms and ferns, the lush and decay of it all. Lyrical and lovely, they're an invocation for the always-changing world."
—Jane Eklund, Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
About the author:
Martha Carlson-Bradley has published three collections of poetry: her full-length book, Season We Can't Resist, (WordTech Editions, 2007) and her two chapbooks, Beast at the Hearth (Adastra, 2005) and Nest Full of Cries (Adastra, 2000)s. Her poems have been published in many literary magazines, including New England Review, Marlboro Review, Carolina Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Zone 3, and in anthologies, such as The Poets' Grimm (Story Line Press, 2003). Her awards include the Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society and an individual artist fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.
Website: mcarlson-bradley.com
E-Mail: mcbpo@yahoo.com
NHR: tinyurl.com/5xpmrl
ISBN 978-1-933456-63-8, 86 pages, $17.00
WordTech Editions, 2007
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