Begin with Trouble
Forthcoming, Hobblebush Books, 2017
Publisher's description: The poems of Begin with Trouble often lift, erase, disarrange, or subvert the language of the 1727 New-England Primer — a book read by children in New England and beyond throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. Whole communities, whole generations of children were introduced both to reading and to a world view that asserted "our God is a consuming Fire." In Begin with Trouble, Carlson-Bradley captures different voices in these communities, from children struggling with class and mortality, duty and the afterlife, to an elderly Native American survivor of internment and an enslaved young man from Africa. The connotations of the book as a physical object also speak throughout Begin with Trouble — as does the twenty-first-century narrator, who discovers that archives contain timeless messages of desire, fear, regret, and an enduring need for human connection. The book is available on Amazon and the publisher's website.
“Inspired by the small book the New-England Primer of 1727, Martha Carlson-Bradley brings to life the world of the New England Puritans, a world where a stern God chooses the elect and is to be adored and feared, where obedience to that God is paramount for he ‘reckons your worth,’ where ‘cruel death is always near’ and work is highly valued. I love these precise, intelligent, compassionate poems for their perfect blend of history, scholarship, imagination and poetry. And especially for their portrayal of the primer itself, its woodcuts, its pages, and for the power of the voices that speak from the poems. This is a book to be read slowly and savored and then read again.” — Patricia Fargnoli, Hallowed: New & Selected Poems
“Begin with Trouble is in essence a letterpress book, which through its very making both tells and reverses its story—that of the Fall, of dominion and divide, of ‘the down low and the / up high’ as embodied by the lessons of 1727 New-England Primer. Martha Carlson Bradley brings to the fore, with her own sharp-edged lines, the mortality of all humanly formulated mandates that arise from the great transpersonal stories. This is a book for our time in which, like then, perhaps like always, deep and life-giving truths are refused and in their place, ‘ink, uneven, creates / odd wraiths that writhe / through a group of children’s faces.’ It invites us to imagine an otherwise, to give the children of the world another story to live by. In Begin with Trouble Martha Carlson Bradley has given us the kind of book on which our lives depend.” —Diane Gilliam, Dreadful Wind & Rain
Sea Called Fruitfulness
WordTech Editions, 2013
Publisher's description: In this collection of lyric poems responding to a 1651 lunar map, the narrator ponders the motivation and lives of the two seventeenth-century astronomers who created this map, also exploring terrains of achievement and failure, intimacy and solitude, celibacy and fertility, certainty and unknowing.
"'What interests me most about a work of art is the artist's quality of mind,' said Henry James famously. Add heart and spirit and engaging intersecting stories and you get what interests me most about Martha Carlson-Bradley's Sea Called Fruitfulness. What she teases out of the lives and life's work of two seventeenth-century Jesuit astronomers creates the character of the writer of this book that is itself a kind of moon map in which we vividly see our own very human faces. This picture is also a wonder, because Martha Carlson-Bradley draws it so well." — Michael Ryan
WordTech Editions, 2013
Publisher's description: In this collection of lyric poems responding to a 1651 lunar map, the narrator ponders the motivation and lives of the two seventeenth-century astronomers who created this map, also exploring terrains of achievement and failure, intimacy and solitude, celibacy and fertility, certainty and unknowing.
"'What interests me most about a work of art is the artist's quality of mind,' said Henry James famously. Add heart and spirit and engaging intersecting stories and you get what interests me most about Martha Carlson-Bradley's Sea Called Fruitfulness. What she teases out of the lives and life's work of two seventeenth-century Jesuit astronomers creates the character of the writer of this book that is itself a kind of moon map in which we vividly see our own very human faces. This picture is also a wonder, because Martha Carlson-Bradley draws it so well." — Michael Ryan
If I Take You Here
Adastra Press, 2011
Publisher's description: When you stand amid the rubble that was the house your mother grew up in and where you visited grandparents, the mind and heart grasp at fragments of memories. These poems, glorious and sad, are this story. Adastra Press, 2011.
"Martha Carlson-Bradley has woven together poems of appealing and clear images that churn up visuals as you read. … [The poems evoke] everyday things that we tend to overlook, even as poets, because we are too busy with our own lives, our own language to notice the obvious and make it not only creatively accessible to a reader, but provide a quick, Oh, I wish I’d thought of that." — Zvi A. Sesling, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
Adastra Press, 2011
Publisher's description: When you stand amid the rubble that was the house your mother grew up in and where you visited grandparents, the mind and heart grasp at fragments of memories. These poems, glorious and sad, are this story. Adastra Press, 2011.
"Martha Carlson-Bradley has woven together poems of appealing and clear images that churn up visuals as you read. … [The poems evoke] everyday things that we tend to overlook, even as poets, because we are too busy with our own lives, our own language to notice the obvious and make it not only creatively accessible to a reader, but provide a quick, Oh, I wish I’d thought of that." — Zvi A. Sesling, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
Season We Can’t Resist
WordTech, 2007
Publisher's description: The speaker of the poems in Season We Can't Resist strives to find a true sense of scale and context for human experience, exploring fertility, science, history, climate, time. WordTech Editions, 2007.
"Season … is a miracle of language and observation. … You can walk through these poems like a forest; you can lose your own body in the bodies of the mushrooms and ferns, the lush and decay of it all. Lyrical and lovely, they're an invocation for the always-changing world." — Jane Eklund, Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
WordTech, 2007
Publisher's description: The speaker of the poems in Season We Can't Resist strives to find a true sense of scale and context for human experience, exploring fertility, science, history, climate, time. WordTech Editions, 2007.
"Season … is a miracle of language and observation. … You can walk through these poems like a forest; you can lose your own body in the bodies of the mushrooms and ferns, the lush and decay of it all. Lyrical and lovely, they're an invocation for the always-changing world." — Jane Eklund, Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
Beast at the Hearth
Adastra, 2005
Publisher's description: Beast at the Hearth explores the passage from childhood into sexually awakened adulthood by retelling three Grimm Brothers' tales, all variations on the beauty and beast story.
"The poet's eye that roams through Beast at the Hearth is wild with attention. It's cinematic in its selectivity, its willingness to hold a frame in focus until what's shown shimmers with possibility. … Carlson-Bradley … understands that the power of fairy tales lies not in their distance from real human life but in their proximity to it. The desires, disguises, and disappointments in these poems are our kin, our kind. By stripping the tales to the most essential — but never predictable — details, Martha Carlson-Bradley gives mythic revision a fresh, contemporary voice." — Jeanne Marie Beaumont, co-editor of The Poets' Grimm (Story Line Press, 2003)
Adastra, 2005
Publisher's description: Beast at the Hearth explores the passage from childhood into sexually awakened adulthood by retelling three Grimm Brothers' tales, all variations on the beauty and beast story.
"The poet's eye that roams through Beast at the Hearth is wild with attention. It's cinematic in its selectivity, its willingness to hold a frame in focus until what's shown shimmers with possibility. … Carlson-Bradley … understands that the power of fairy tales lies not in their distance from real human life but in their proximity to it. The desires, disguises, and disappointments in these poems are our kin, our kind. By stripping the tales to the most essential — but never predictable — details, Martha Carlson-Bradley gives mythic revision a fresh, contemporary voice." — Jeanne Marie Beaumont, co-editor of The Poets' Grimm (Story Line Press, 2003)
The twenty poems in this series are further speculations on the Hansel and Gretel tale. They contrast the innocence of childhood with the realism of a family in need. Adastra Press, 2000.
"With precision, passion, and insight, Martha Carlson-Bradley strips a familiar Grimm tale to its terrifying essence in this subtle and haunting sequence. … This is poetry of great compression and resonance; it is what poetry should be." — Joan Aleshire
Send Martha an email — or leave her a message on Facebook.
"With precision, passion, and insight, Martha Carlson-Bradley strips a familiar Grimm tale to its terrifying essence in this subtle and haunting sequence. … This is poetry of great compression and resonance; it is what poetry should be." — Joan Aleshire
Send Martha an email — or leave her a message on Facebook.