Heartbeat Geography: New and Selected Poems

by John Brandi

A major collection of Brandi’s work, spanning nearly thirty years of travel— from early poems written in South America to those from India, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, the Arctic, the North American outback, the deep solitude of New Mexico’s mountains, and always from the continent of the heart.

“Brandi’s sandy poem mandalas, crisscrossing back and forth on their own paths, begin to fill out landscapes in depth.”— Gary Snyder

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

About the author

John Brandi, poet, painter, essayist and haiku writer, has resided in New Mexico for 35 years. Over the decades his poems and essays have celebrated his rambles into the unexpected crannies of the high desert, as well as presenting his conversations with bizarre loners, spunky elders, and eccentric renegades.

As a poet, Brandi owes much to the Beat tradition, and to poets as diverse as Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Matsuo Basho. Brandi's writing and visual art is specifically informed by his world journeys. His dozens of publications include poetry, travel essays, limited-edition letterpress books, hand-colored broadsides, and modern American haiku. He has lectured at the Palace of the Governors Museum, Santa Fe, at Punjabi University, India, and has been a guide and lecturer for university students studying in Bali, Java, and Mexico. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry and four Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry teaching awards.