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A Girl in Water is newest release from Parallel Press

Posted 1/22/2002

A Girl in Water by Barbara EdelmanMADISON, Wis.-- Poet Barbara Edelman reflects on both the joys and hardships of youth in Parallel Press's latest release, A Girl in Water. This 16-piece chapbook delves into the imagination of a woman who struggles to form her own identity using her mother and absent father as role models.

A chapbook is a small-format literary work, usually poetry or essays. A Girl in Water marks the 17th release by Parallel Press, an imprint of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.

Edelman teaches writing and literature at the University of Pittsburgh and is poet-in-residence at the Ellis School, teaching poetry and writing to grade school girls. Her one-act play "Charades" was produced as one of 10 winners of the 1993 Pittsburgh New Works Festival.

In addition, Edelman's awards include a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant for poetry, residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Scott Turow Award for short fiction at the University of Pittsburgh.


Here is a sample poem from A Girl in Water:

Dream Father (Cloud Father)


"What's down the toilet?" I asked
flushing five times, transfixed
by the magical swirl.

"Never Never Land,"
he answered. "Stop
wasting water."

We flew to Urbana
on a DC3—
a winged hippopotamus
bumping toward extinction
through the light and dark cauliflower
thunder clouds.

"Is that a dirty book?"
I said at the airport.

"No. They pit this picture on it
so that people will buy it."


"Well, what's the book about?"

"I don't know.
I bought it for the picture."

I may have made that story up
the way I make him up now,
the way I dream him
into foolishness—the father who finally wants me—
he doesn't know better

so I must
kiss his forehead,
as he did mine when
I was a child. His dream skin
is like old cheese.

And when he speaks
his blither of syllables
I put my arms around him
and he starts to form words,
to tell me
what he wants from me,

then I remember
I am dreaming him,

that when we speak on the phone—
his voice rumbling, fixed
inside the storm's eye of logic—

he will forget
the names of my friends,
my poems, the little
tucked tail of my accomplishments

but he'll remember
the delicate topography of clouds
the storms they give birth to

altostratus
cumulonimbus
cirrostratus nebulosus

Each Parallel Press chapbook is $10; annual subscriptions for six are $50 ordered by writing:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State St.
Madison, WI 53706

For information, see its Web site at http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu, 262-2600.
E-mail inquiries may be sent to kfrazier@library.wisc.edu.

 

 

 

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