{"id":23575,"date":"2013-10-27T09:30:07","date_gmt":"2013-10-27T15:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=23575"},"modified":"2013-10-27T09:30:07","modified_gmt":"2013-10-27T15:30:07","slug":"lillian-yvonne-bertrams-but-a-storm-is-blowing-from-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/lillian-yvonne-bertrams-but-a-storm-is-blowing-from-paradise\/","title":{"rendered":"Lillian-Yvonne Bertram\u2019s But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Storm\"<\/a>In poet Lillian-Yvonne Bertram\u2019s debut collection But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise<\/em> (Red Hen Press, 2012), the diction is daring, the voice muscular. In \u201cWhy I Want To Be A Tow Truck Driver,\u201d she writes,<\/p>\n

See the snowclouds<\/em>
\n thrusting over the range<\/em>
\n like a cough,<\/em>
\n a hard-packed fist? This is how<\/em>
\n I come. Free of disguise.<\/em>
\n Because life is hard but also crisp and literary\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

In \u201cCircles in the Sky\u201d the throat is \u201cmy throat zone\/ of avoidance buffaloing the sky above\u2026\u201d and crossing one of the Dakotas by automobile becomes a cosmic trip \u201cthe way cross\/country\/has always\/been\/lugnnutted\/ to a wheel carto-\/graphic\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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 \u00a0as varied as wildlife (coyotes, elk), the natural sciences (inter-galactic formulas, weather patterns\u2014in both a glass globe as well as \u201cthe model solar system, [in which] planets suspend & twirl\/as if from a spider\u2019s whirl.\u201d), 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<\/em> blood:<\/p>\n

[\u2026]
\nBisect the heart.<\/p>\n

Hold each half in hand as a common coconut.<\/em>
\n Bang it together.<\/em>
\n Rhythm of your own choosing.<\/em><\/p>\n

These are poems that have an urgency and lust for language, poems that feel like they\u2019re vibrating at high speed over rumble strips on the side of the highway\u2014poems about to go off-road. Some of them actually do, regrettably, heady innovation turned to gimmick and mimicry. (Her \u201cHinterland Ham Radio Signals\u201d comes to mind.) But this is a prodigious talent to sit up and take notice of and over-reaching of this forgivable kind is inevitable.<\/p>\n

Not only is Bertram\u2019s language here fresh, nuanced, full of hard light but the content is expansive. Titles of the poems give you a hint of that landscape, literal as in \u201cGiclee Self-Portrait With Mount Rushmore\u201d to the figurative as in \u201cRex Mundi, or, Watching My Father Paint What He Knows of the Horizon.\u201d References to and \u201cglosses\u201d on the work of other poets and writers as well as to the singer-songwriter Josh Ritter abound.<\/p>\n

But always the images return to the concrete, blood-engorged and, at times, to the realm of social (in)justice \u201ca car full of boys yells\/nigger piglet<\/em> at the girl walking home\/from the late shift at taco bell\u2026.\u201d And yet even in this poem, titled \u201cMoon Illusion Ecologue\u201d the harsh racism, violence–even the portentous presence of cops \u201cin the unlit corner\/\/of a parking lot\u201d–the poem has a pastoral loveliness to it that belies its content: \u201c\u2026everything we see goldens\/\/before we die\u2014a perfect picture: someone\u2019s mother,\/someone\u2019s daughter, a ruddy moon\/tacked above a building necked with vines\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bertram is full of contradictions and confessions in But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise<\/em>. The effect it has on the reader is to crane the neck for the next gem underscored as it is by the poet\u2019s uncanny ability simultaneously to expand galactic-ally while collapsing in on neurons, the American prairie, the four chambers of an antiseptic heart.
\nA storm indeed.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram\u2019s <\/em>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 <\/em>Quarterly West, and a Vice-Presidential Fellow at the University of Utah, Bertram has had work appear in <\/em>Black Warrior Review, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, Narrative magazine, Subtropics, and other journals. This is her first book.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In poet Lillian-Yvonne Bertram\u2019s debut collection But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press, 2012), the diction is daring, the voice muscular. In \u201cWhy I Want To Be A Tow Truck Driver,\u201d she writes, See the snowclouds thrusting over the range like a cough, a hard-packed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":834,"featured_media":23578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,35],"tags":[1710,1715,1713,1714,1297],"class_list":["post-23575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bytes","category-literary-arts","tag-15-bytes-book-awards","tag-benjamin-saltman-award","tag-but-a-storm-is-blowing-from-paradis","tag-lillian-yvonne-bertram","tag-red-hen-press"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Storm.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 07:49:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23575"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23608,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23575\/revisions\/23608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}