poet
I am honored that Mouthbrooders has been selected as a finalist for the 2020 Connecticut Book Awards.
Check out the other finalists and register for the virtual ceremony event, October 15, 6:00 p.m.
Today
I miss the rhododendron that dried
last season and still rusts where orchids,
hot-house born, will be fed with
three sips of cold ice.
A poem from my latest collection Mouthbrooders, published by Homebound Publications.
Visit the store to order and support National Poetry Month, Independent Publishers, and writers who want to share their words.
the ones who promised . . .
During six months of vocal cord paralysis, author and professor Amy Nawrocki turned to the written word and fell in love with language again. The result of this exploration is her stunning collection Mouthbrooders, full of sounds and their echoes—ravens screeching, eggs cracking, and acorns falling. As Nawrocki struggles to find her own voice again, she midwives the voices of catastrophe, of memory, and of the small miracles of everyday life.
“Amy Nawrocki’s new collection Mouthbrooders is precise and carefully contained. Each poem is a vessel crafted to express one perfect thing: how saliva works on a burn; the tender terror of bringing a word or a child into life; the pleasure of “rigatoni…heavy/ with artichokes, cream sauce,/peppercorns slowly braised/and crushed under a fork”; the desire to “sample” one’s own flesh; a conversation with a peregrine in which the persona asks, “Tell me about the wind, the kind/that quiets fear and lengthens your cries/ into inaudible whispers.” Mouthbrooders is a collection to savor.”
Laurel S. Peterson, Norwalk Community College, Poet Laureate, Norwalk, CT 2016 – 2019
Wanting to be seeded
into the perennial world, the poet
seeks the counsel of tiger lilies.
from Mouthbrooders
My explorations of voice and point of view have led me to the creation and publication of Mouthbrooders which is now available through Homebound Publications and where ever books are sold.
During six months of vocal cord paralysis, author and professor Amy Nawrocki turned to the written word and fell in love with language again. The result of this exploration is her stunning collection Mouthbrooders, full of the sounds and their echoes—ravens screeching, eggs cracking, and acorns falling. Faucets drip, pens brood, souvenirs slip through fingers. As Nawrocki struggles to find her own voice again, she midwives the voices of catastrophe, of memory, and of the small miracles of everyday life.
back-cover copy
A few years back, I ran a workshop at the Miller Memorial Library in Hamden, CT, where we discussed our connections (personal and literary) to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll’s book never really grabbed me as a young reader, and after reflecting as an adult, my associations were more negative than positive. This isn’t really surprising, since at their roots, the imagery and adventures in the children’s tale are scary and uncomfortable.
On the other hand, rereading the text, I began to notice the language and the way that Alice (and Carroll) described the processes of transformation. In particular, at the bottom of the rabbit hole, she encounters the “small passage” and “[longs] to get out of that dark hall and wander those beds of bright flowers.” As she laments, she wishes that she could “shut up like a telescope.” The phrase struck me as peculiar, both visual and metaphorical. I couldn’t get the phrase out of my head, and so eventually wrote “Shutting Up Like a Telescope” to probe my own ideas about fitting into spaces.
Here is a different exploration of my reflections on Alice and her adventures. I wrote this exploratory memoir following the workshop:
I come to Alice from a tree branch, from a separate limb. Maybe I’m the Cheshire Cat, watching myself watch her. I have no immediately accessible memory of time or place. No matter. I see from my pocket watch that I’ve arrived too late. She’s already gone down, and only by looking back—or looking through—or catching my reflection in my own looking glass—does she manifest.
My mother read to us often, and I recall, impressionistically, other books: their muted green covers, gold edged pages and pen-and-ink drawings. This is how I can render Toad and Rat and Badger in my mind from Wind in the Willows. I can still touch those pages.
Though I can’t pinpoint how I came to know her, it’s not hard to picture Alice, her blue dress and white pinafore painted like so many others in the Technicolor of Disney. But whether her image is a piece from a specific moment or a combination of moments, I don’t know for sure.
But it seems that my memory of Alice begins on page 8. I imagine that I’ve seen this drawing before, and that the first time I saw it I felt something. The image of long-necked Alice, stretched like silly putty and uncomfortably large, frightens me even now. It conjures in my mind a sense memory, something tactile, as if I can feel the vertebrae in my own neck separate. But unlike the thrill of seeing each inch of your life penciled on a hallway wall as you grow and age, I see Alice’s elastic neck as strangulation, instead of release. The key I need is out of reach.
Instead of watching my feet disappear underneath me, I watch a body in torment, and just for good measure the Queen of Hearts has come along to say with all the echo of childhood discomfort: “Off with her head!” The rabbit hole is dark, and the looking glass reflects a fat little girl who can’t stand to be seen.
Alice’s neck is most vivid because it speaks to my nine-year-old self and the torture that my own body inflicted on me. Betrayed by the little cakes and drinks of “cherry-tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffee and hot buttered toast;” betrayed by birthdays and elongating limbs, adolescence simply became “curiouser and curiouser,” and I became sadder and sadder. Even now, Alice’s long neck frightens me out of my skin.
Purchase your copy of Mouthbrooders and check me out on Soundcloud.
Order your copy today from Homebound Publications for a 20% discount!
My latest collection, Mouthbrooders, is set for an official release on June 10. Order now from Homebound Publications and use INDIESTRONG when you check out to receive 20% off on your entire order.
During six months of vocal cord paralysis, author and professor Amy Nawrocki turned to the written word and fell in love with language again. The result of this exploration is her stunning collection Mouthbrooders, full of sounds and their echoes—ravens screeching, eggs cracking, and acorns falling. As Nawrocki struggles to find her own voice again, she midwives the voices of catastrophe, of memory, and of the small miracles of everyday life.
Mouthbrooders, published by Homebound Publications
“With language that freshens and lends intrigue to the familiar, Amy Nawrocki makes a sacrament of life’s ordinary rituals from gardening to shoveling snow to waiting at the DMV. Whether it’s a walk in the woods, a meal, or the travails of illness, readers are in the moment with her. I delight in worlds with ‘lollipops that suck away loneliness,’ where a woman is ‘foraging for her lover’s shoulder,’ and there’s a ‘taxidermy of goodbyes.’ I want to linger and read again.”
–David K. Leff, author of The Breach and Terranexus
My new collection, Mouthbrooders, is ready to go to the printer for release in June. Order your copy and support Homebound Publications and get a 20% discount.
Almost a foot of snow fell last night, and this morning’s best-laid plans were tossed away when the plowman’s tires spun more quickly than the clock which told me I’d be late for class. Machines did what machines do, a little better than we can do ourselves.
Here’s to shovels shoveling.
Waiting for the Plowman
In the morning: Rousseau’s Confessions. Breakfast:
something forgettable and unfulfilling, toast,
the white of an egg circling a shiny yolk.
By midday, the desert of chalk buries the laurel
and watching juncos burrow under the feeder
suffices for motion. Blank under its plastic face
the kitchen dial signals two o’clock with sleek
anemic hands. Within the hour, sugar held
in the spoon’s mouth is let go into black liquid,
and boots, scuffed and sheltered alert the tangled
knit scarf to concoct itself. At four, shovel in hand
I depart to do the job myself. The man
and his truck are nowhere to be found
even though the blizzard’s end is new
and he promised and there is a lot of it.
Lighter than a pile of proverbial feathers
but sticky and heaping, the first bundle I take
begins to build a dune around the driveway
but there is nowhere else to go and no rest
and nothing to do to lessen the white
except to bend at the knees and let it fly.
“Waiting for the Plowman” first appeared in the summer 2016 issue of Sixfold, and will appear in my forthcoming collection Mouthbrooders, coming out this summer from Homebound Publications.
Amy Nawrocki 