The Heat Bird

by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

"a single long, exquisitely crafted metaphysical poem about the enigmas of love, silence, the physical world, and human error, about the paradoxical spaces between them, about the ways light speaks to shadow. Most of all, it is about how the creative imagination breathes and thrives. The effect is dazzling." Brent Morris, American Poetry Association Newsletter.

Genres: Poetry

62 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 1983

About the author

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (Chinese: 白萱华) is a contemporary poet. Winner of two American Book Awards, her work is often associated with the Language School, the poetry of the New York School, phenomenology, and visual art. She is married to the painter Richard Tuttle, with whom she has frequently collaborated.

Reviews

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mesmeric long sequence consisting of a series of 9-12 line stanzas. These are metaphysical and enigmatic glimpses into the sculpted landscape of New Mexico and Alaska. Berssenbrugge relocates us into that hazy space between the speaker and her surroundings, readjusting our relationship towards an external world defined by silence, light, distance, love, migration and decay. Her etherial diction is both familiar yet distancing. Although this book is slim it seems to carry the breathy air of the world and stars within it: "She crosses this point, and light falls on her / and it falls on her as she goes out / but it is a different light".

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never mind if he calls, the places you get
through inwardness take time, and to drift
down tot he shore of the island, you know
by the sand moving, even the coarse sand here
It's hard to say if you can even stand up, there
but there is blue sky,and blue water tipping up
the same distance from you as your face. Its face
goes further behind the eyes, without weight
or haze, andthe horizon is just a change where
from going deep you go wider, but go

- Pack Rate Sieve, 1, pg. 13

* * *

Take a strip of white paper, turn
the top of the strip in your right hand so
it faces the floor, then glue the ends together
If you go along on the outside, it seems
I am not connected to you. I'm trying
to think now if it has to be white paper
Can its how some light through?

- Farolita, 1, pg. 33

* * *

These days I'm suspecting grief over you is
a metaphor for grief in me. I used to think I
made a metaphor out of every fact to screen
you. Then I suspected there actually were facts, or
it was advantageous to imagine there were, but
not I draw from actual longing a longing locus
where any dry leaf clatters against the windowpane
in a web

- Ricochet off Water, 1, pg. 43

* * *

A critic objects to their "misterian" qualities
I look it up and don't find it, which must relate
to the mysteres in religions. Stepping
across stones in the river, which covers
my sound, I startle a big bird who must circle
the meadow to gain height. There is a din
of big wings. A crow loops over and over
me. I can see many feathers gone from its wing
by sky filling in, but it's not the big bird
I walk into the meadow to find what I've already called
an eagle to myself. At first you just notice a heap
like old asphalt and white stones dumped

- The Heat Bird, 1, pg. 53

[Sophia Mautz · Rating 4 out of 5]

She is my new favorite poet. So cool to read one of her first books and see how in her short, prosaic poems the seeds of length and abstraction and spirituality that define her later work are planted. I somehow keep magically coming across the right poetry books at the right time, and the first poem gripped me. Light is her language and obsession. Alaska, New Mexico, China... we are soul connected to the same places. What's not to love.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whoa. This book is a trip. I'm not sure if this was the best place to start with Berssenbrugge's work, but I'm glad I started here.

[Jackson rabbit Warrener · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute beauty.

[justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh...

[Hannah Piette · Rating 5 out of 5]

If a bright clearing will form suddenly, we will already know if it

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "how" of the writing here is almost everything I want. Formally, the works are untitled, contained presences, 9 to 12 lines of equal length, without the distracting mannerism of punctuation. There is almost no affectation in diction or syntax. They make their guideposts evident without poorly designed signage.

As an action verb, these choose sculpting, in lieu of intimating, or wondering, or worse. They are directionally obscure, connected less by declarations than effects and associations. One gets expansive feelings that there is much, much more that could be said. How does the writing leave room for coupling with the reader's own thoughts that follow afterward? There is a chemistry of impossible exchange from mind to mind. "It seems I go out on it without any door, into/blue hatchings by yellow grass on snow. How did she/get through the wall? He was standing at the door waiting for her." (34)

There is another oscillation between nature and narrator. Walk with it. There is a suppleness that is both etherial and weighty. They are conversational enough to make you feel comfortable with the oddity of real thought expressed.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

must read fot the shifting diction. she's one of the best... brought it along but haven't touched it yet.

[Marthe Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://www.goodreads.com/images/layou...

[Mills College Library]

811.54 B535h 1983