Fence Above the Sea (NEW SERIES (AHSAHTA PRESS), 10) - Softcover

Byrd, Brigitte

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0916272842 ISBN 13: 9780916272845

Publisher: Ahsahta Press, 2005

Synopsis

Poetry. The speaker of Brigitte Byrd's debut volume pivots in the roles of mourning daughter, affectionate mother, and poet whose attention to the sensory and sensual world never falters. In language both musical and linguistically playful, Byrd revivifies the form of unlineated lyric that in her hands reminds us of its French forebears and could never be termed "prosaic." These poems haunt, ache, and celebrate by turns; always they sing. "She is a wise, ebullient poet whose prose poems are mosaics of humor and loss, a playful requiem for life as it is in this dangerous new century"--Maxine Chernoff

About this title

About the Author

A native of France where she was trained as a dancer, Brigitte Byrd first moved to Hawaii in 1989 then relocated to Mississippi (briefly), Florida, and most recently, Georgia. She is the author of Song of a Living Room (Ahsahta, 2009), The Dazzling Land (Black Zinnias, 2008), and Fence above the Sea (Ahsahta, 2005). She is an Associate Professor of English teaching Creative Writing at Clayton State University  and an editorial reviewer for Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies.

Review

All is violently beautiful in the ravaged places of Byrd's first book.  "Unintentional Promenade" ends "When she squints in the wind the daughter hits her heart" (69).  For what is love but the blind persistence of a beating heart? --Carrie Bennett Chattahootchee Review 

[Byrd] focuses on moments and attempts declarative statements, as well as the emergence and repetition of images in the middle of flux. There the reader can take pleasure in the loss of gravity that Byrd creates and sustains through the careful negotiation of the lyric speaker and form. --J'Lyn Chapman Denver Quarterly

Through the figure of the daughter and thinking about Life, Byrd seems to say motherhood is a project not easily assembled into a coherent form; therefore, change the form, change the expectations of what mothers are, what daughters, where unity lies. --Cynthia Arrieu-King Word for Word

Byrd's split prose is a gesture that pulls together what is, by nature, fragmented memory; it is a reconstruction that makes memory reenact itself. -- Anne Heide Parcel One

Edition details

• Publisher: Ahsahta Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0916272842
• ISBN 13: 9780916272845
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 124