Polly Brody’s third book of poems, At the Flower’s Lip, consists of poems depicting the anguish of divorce and the exquisite joy of late-life love. The book has led Susan King to remark, “Wow! I dare readers’ heart rates not to quicken.” King goes on to write, “Polly Brody’s poems have few equals for their concision, clarity and emotional impact. Hot and cool at once, Brody’s work is marked by fresh, original, highly sensual imagery with a deep spiritual resonance. Riveting, playful and spot on in their metaphors drawn from the natural world, these poems are both earthy and transcendent.” And Eamon Grennan concurs: “Stocked with sensuous natural images, Polly Brody’s poems in these two suites have an “inward, secret smolder” that keeps them alive and their maker still singing, so “The field eddies and swirls / under an ardency of air.”

Polly Brody received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Mount Holyoke College, and after returning to school in mid-life, earned a Masters Degree in Biology from Southern Connecticut State University. A resident of Southbury, Connecticut, she has traveled widely in Europe, East Africa, Australia and South America. As a biologist and experienced field ornithologist, she lectures on animal behavior and has been an active advocate for the environment. Polly Brody is the author of two earlier collections: Other Nations (poetry) and The Burning Bush (essays with poetry). She has been published in many literary journals and has received numerous awards for her writing. She has been a presenting poet in the New England Foundation for the Humanities series, “After Frost: Poetry in New England,” and has read widely throughout Connecticut and New York.

The Antrim House seminar room offers notes, ideas for discussion & writing, images, and/or additional poems. Click here to read the seminar offering for Perspective.

Click here to read sample poems.

BOOK STATISTICS

ISBN: 978-0-9792226-4-1
Length: 36 pages
Binding: 5.5" x 8.5" saddle-stitched

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ALCHEMY

More than townships apart,
by magic tricks your mind is good at,
you’ve transformed me from lover
into “mother of your children,”
managed a total white-out
colder than Arctic blindness.

No memory of desire
kicks you under the heart:
not that night at the Yale club
when you slid under my Pucci slip,
nor the long train rocking
from London to Edinburgh,
nor the time I startled your bare feet
with my breasts.Now your cordial cheek
short-stops my lips.

OMPHALOS

I walk downslope to your darkness
pooled there in the valley’s cup,
slip off my chrysalis of clothing
and step into you.
Your cool liquid caresses my ankles,
my calves, behind my knees,
slides over my hips and belly.
I lean forward and lay myself
upon you, glide into you.
Your black silk sweeps along my ribcage,
along my reaching arms, curves in gentle
bow-waves against my breasts.
I swim in cool, black silk.
Moon, rising full, draws her train
upon your onyx surface.
I turn into her wake,
stroke through quicksilver,
light rippling at my throat.
From my palms whirl discs of light.
I roll onto my back,
spread outstretched on you,
eyes closed, fingers lax,
head, back, buttocks, legs
buoyed on your cool depth,
laved in moonlight
and your blackness.

TRANSMUTATION

At your touch
pulse leaps
like a startled trout
deep in its watery domain,
and from this nexus —
your hand on me —
ripples ring and widen.
Cast into your stream,
I feel your flow grasp,
swirl and eddy through me,
shivers chime my spine.
Your depth invites a novel balance.
Going deep,
now undulant with you,
I’m taking your river in,
tasting you,
breathing….

RECEIVING THE WIND

Ripe wheat —
obeisance of stems
heavy with seed.
Wind, inscribing itself,
the shape of itself,
in fluencies of grain.
The field eddies and swirls
under an ardency of air. 

Clouds roil west to east,
cast down penumbral waves
across the tawny light of grass,
again make visible
the hurrying form of air. 

So do we know
passion’s sweet seizure
by the impress we take upon ourselves,
our desire to bow and bend
under that touch again, again.

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