“It’s rare to read poetry that is this experiential, visceral and
somehow transcendent at the same time. In three sections Bertram runs
her electric fingers as if over the braille of American life as varied
as wildlife (coyotes, elk), the natural sciences (inter-galactic
formulas, weather patterns—in both a glass globe as well as “the model
solar system, [in which] planets suspend & twirl/as if from a
spider’s whirl.”), as varied as “blankets sewn/with thinning economic
plans and called them/shawls…” as well as the body, including in one of
the more memorable poems, the laboratory heart sans blood . . .” Read the full review
But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Red Hen Press
$17.95
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award) is a finalist for the 2013 15 Bytes Book Award in Poetry. An Assistant Editor at Quarterly West, and a Vice-Presidential Fellow at the University of Utah, Bertram has had work appear in Black Warrior Review, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, Narrative magazine, Subtropics, and other journals. This is her first book.
