![[logo] Crest of the University of Wisconsin-Madison](/images/crest.png)
![[logo] Ask a Librarian](/images/ask.png)
« Back to All News Releases
Electrifying poetry comes to life in Aqua Regia
By Laura-Claire Corson
Library Communications
Posted 2/28/2007
MADISON, Wis. – An exciting and diverse collection of poems comprise Aqua Regia, a new chapbook by F. J. Berg
mann that is named after nitrohydrochloric acid, a fuming, yellow acid that is used chiefly to dissolve metals.
The chapbook establishes both extreme highs and lows, as it is divided into two parts: “Electropositive” meaning positive electricity/energy, and “Corrosive,” a more negative, harmful connotation.
The airiness of the first portion of “Aqua Regia” is shown in the second poem about a captivating woman. “Her kisses were like drunk wine. / Men would reel drunken / from her embrace, vomiting / and searching desperately / for a twelve-step program” Bergmann writes in “Perfection.”
The chapbook takes a comical twist when Bergmann writes five to-do lists in chronological order, demonstrating the busy nature of everyday life. In “Listing to One Side, But Still Seaworthy,” the first list includes purchasing “Tide (without bleach! READ THE BOX!)” and “Return library books.” By the final list, Bergmann has to “Pay library fines” and do laundry: “Tide—at 3 am? (high or low?)”
Later, in “In the Final Analysis,” Bergmann’s tone becomes darker as she describes a tortured soul who hates himself. “The man who hates himself / always thinks he should be somewhere else, / be someone kinder or more useful,” she writes.
Bergmann currently sells used books at Avol’s Bookstore in downtown Madison. She said she used to train racehorses, once illustrated a manual of interesting diseases and was a rural postal carrier.
She’s been awarded several distinctions, including the Rinehart National Poetry Award in 2003, the Pauline Ellis Prose Poem Prize in 2004 and the “Rosebud” Mary Shelley Imaginative Fiction Prize in 2005. For more information, visit Bergmann's Web site.
The Parallel Press is an imprint of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. Aqua Regia is its 48th chapbook. For more information, visit http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/poetry.
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
A selection from the poem sequence "Patience, My Ars Poetica:"
I put my hands on the keyboard
and wait for invisible birds
to peck at my fingers.
I pick up the pen
and wait for an imperative wind
to tug at my fist.
I look up at precipitous clouds
and wait for the impending words
to fall into my head.
I lurk in ambush, leaping
from snarled thickets to attack
my prey, elusive, unseen.
