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Aqua Curves
by Karen Braucher.
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Aqua Curves is beautiful. I love the curvy breaking wave on the front cover,
and the presentation of the names of the book and the author in the same color of aqua as the wave.
The back cover has a photo (also in aqua) of an intriguing statue of a mermaid.
The whole outside of the book is very coherent and satisfying.
Book and cover design is by Tommy Herrmann, who deserved enthusiastic praise.
Within the book, the curvy table of contents is a delight.
Skimming it, one sees not only many new treats but also many poems
seen or heard before, known and admired.
Aqua Curves won the 2004 Stevens Manuscript Competition for a poetry manuscript, judged
by poet and fiction writer Peter Meinke. It contains some poems from
her
chapbook
Mermaid Café, (Pudding House, 2004) as well as others.
It's available from
the National Federation of State Poetry
Societies (www.nfsps.com)
or directly from Karen Braucher ($15 via e-mail contact braucher@portlandia.com).
- Among my favorite poems of
Aqua Curves:
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- "To Leave with No Suitcase" (p.17),
- "The World in Miniature" (p.32), seven delicate quatrains on the Japanese Garden in Portland.
The title come from its fifth quatrain:
It is calming to view the world in miniature,
as if one were up in the clouds.
This pond edge could be a whole harbor,
The mushroom lantern its lighthouse.
Copyright © 2005 by Karen Braucher.
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- "Becoming Ambidextrous"
- "How to Stay Married" (one of the strongest in
Mermaid Café):
- "Mrs. Fitzgerald Discovers Her Red Hat", which has some of the
best slant rhymes this side of
Kay Ryan
and Seamus Heaney: Duster and Oyster;
Woman and Ribbon; Brothers and Smothered.
- "Instructions", which could be a Mer-godmother's blessing at a newborn's cradle.
It ends:
Among weapons, be a disarming strategy,
among doors, the one that opens to thin air,
among shadows you find on the floor,
be the one that flutters.
Copyright © 2005 by Karen Braucher.
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As Ms. Braucher says, her book was, 'Inspired by the ocean and female themes' and
'abounds with mermaids, seafood, wit, and humor.'
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Mermaid Café from Puddinghouse Press.
-
Karen Braucher's
chapbook
Mermaid Café from Puddinghouse Press
(2004), is a celebration of mermaid tales and tails, and of escape and return.
It includes another of my favorites, the delightful
How to Stay Married (first published in "Manzanita Quarterly" (Autumn 2002)):
The perfect marriage is, they say,
a blind woman married to a deaf man.
Or is it a deaf woman married to
a blind man? Failing to achieve
these physical variations,
it is helpful to think
of marriage as ocean waves -
...
After a while, you must be
a boat, or parts of a boat -
yesterday the rusty scupper,
today gunwales, tomorrow ballast
and bailing buckets.You must
be a motor, a sail, a paddle.
It's helpful to enjoy the view.
It's helpful not to think
about the lack of life preservers.
Copyright © 2005 by Karen Braucher.
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Blog entry for Mermaid Café.
- Sending Messages Over Inconceivable Distances (2000)
by Karen Braucher.
-
Sending Messages Over Inconceivable Distances is
a collection of narrative and lyrical poems about a generous life and the adoption
of a Chinese baby girl.
Among my favorites are
Inside the Water (p.59),
Beginning Mandarin (p.63),
and the brilliant
Economics (pp.12-13), which is also the source of the book's title:
I understand money, the trading
of a symbol for energy between
people, but time I don't comprehend
any better than my husband's love
for radio antennas or my need to study
mystery...
... Each hour
I spend working to make money
is worth two hours, the hour I spend
and the hour I lost smelling lilacs,
...
Only love makes time not equal
money. I quit work, go to my
husband hunches over his
transmitter. He shouts, "Yankee Zulu!",
international phonetics, over the
airwaves. "I'm a Yankee Zulu too,"
I say. He adjusts my buttons, begins
protocol: "Let's send messages
over inconceivable distances."
Copyright © 2005 by Karen Braucher.
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Autographed copy! You can get your very own copy with the poet's autograph if you contact
Karen Braucher
(braucher@portlandia.com).
Sending Messages Over Inconceivable Distances
is available directly from the publisher, The Bacchae Press.
For an order form, more information about the book,
and another poem ("First Chinese New Year"), check this web site:
www.bcpl.lib.md.us/~tross/braucher/hninfo.html.
For more poetry samples, visit
the author's
website:
http://www.karenbraucher.com.
Blog entry for Sending Messages Over Inconceivable Distances.
Highlights of Poetry.
