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Interpretive Work: Poems

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The poems in Elizabeth Bradfield's wonderful debut collection explore complex territories--the Alaskan wilderness as well as suburban Anchorage, transgenic science and working as a naturalist on a commercial cruise ship. Most prominently, Bradfield shares with unassuming intensity her life as a lesbian in our culture, negotiating family expectations and the often uncomfortable assumptions of acquaintances and strangers. The language here is clear and plainspoken, but Bradfield never simplifies the difficulties and pleasures of human interactions with the natural world or of the many varieties of love. As she writes in "Nonnative Invasive": "None of us knows how to accept / the way love changes what it's drawn to . . ." Bradfield's spirit is generous and inclusive, and her poems help us see that our interpretive work of understanding the world is a collective and bracing task.

When Eloise Klein Healy announced she would edit an imprint for Red Hen Press, I eagerly awaited the first publication under the Arktoi label. Interpretive Work by Bradfield is that book--a collection that surpasses all of my expectations, but not quickly or without effort for this book is meant to be chewed slowly as the title suggests. At first, I found the title curious and not especially provocative. Then I turned the book over looking for clues about the meaning, and I found a poem, "No More Nature," instead of the typical blurbs of commendation above a photo of the author. The poem aroused my curiosity like a subtle whiff of something delicious cooking upon the stove. However, I would have to read the entire volume before I tasted the full flavor of "No More Nature" which appears again as the last poem in the book.
Bradfield's work is stunning in its complexity. She offers deeply nuanced portrayals of the obscure--the marbled murrelet or infrared reflectoscopy--as a window into the lesbian experience. She teases apart the intricacies of longing and desire. Again and again, these poems end in unexpected twists of revelation. The book is divided into five parts that roughly, and interpretively, correspond to a lesbian's gradual recognition of being different, coming out, and living in a heterosexual world.
It's difficult to pick a favorite among this treasure chest of language and image, but "Flooded Forest" hit me in the solar plexus as I grasped this truth: "Then, for some reason or another,/ according to some clock we share, desire." I haven't experienced all the truths Bradfield explores though she never ceased to surprise me with her raw clarity, for example in "After All" which dives frankly into not giving birth and the difficulties of female relations: mother/daughter and women lovers.
I read (and re-read) Bradfield's poems with awe and appreciation for how deeply and how well she interprets the lives we lesbians live.

In the book's epigraph, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, we are reminded of the importance of awakening "the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom" and directing the mind "to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us." This is where Bradfield's work as a poet intersects with her work as a naturalist; she is devoted to training us to observe the world closely, "searching for a response unlayered, genuine / true to what was there, gone, there in the woods" ("Fireflies First Seen at Age Thirty") and "unable to not listen, unwilling to miss anything" ("No More Nature").
You'll come away from Interpretive Work feeling inspired and illuminated. You'll want to fall, headfirst, deeply in love with the world and with someone in it, knowing you'll get your heart broken time and time again, knowing it will be worth it.

Gorgeous. Smart. Funny. Literate. Tender. Thick. Grounded. Lyrical. Intense. Sweet. Tough. This poet does it all and more. One of my favorite books of poems of the year.