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Find Me In the Feral Pockets
Find Me In the Feral Pockets: Poems from the Gowanus Interregnum provides an amphibious tour of a peculiar New York City neighborhood in transition with the Gowanus Canal reflecting hardships and catharsis. Poet Brad Vogel paddles through pollution, relationships, environmental concerns, accreted layers of history, and even humor as he distills Gowanus into a collection of unique, sometimes bracing poems. The collection captures the values of "the unplanned place" in the urban landscape and the individual mind of a city dweller. A quirky, flood-prone realm on the brink, Gowanus comes to life through an array of lenses, from floating condoms to street-end weeds, from resilient fish to unknown organisms in the polluted muck, a weird world is found to be worth noticing, worth loving. The book features an interesting, if not unique, element: a poetic heat map that indicates the precise geographic origins of each poem in the collection in the context of the neighborhood.
Broad Meadow Bird
Broad Meadow Bird: 15 Years of Poetry is American poet Brad Vogel's first formal book of poetry - and a window into fifteen years of his creative output. At times visceral and flinty, at times ethereal and playful, Vogel's poetry reflects him as he comes into his own across multiple states, nations and states of mind. The sturdiness of the poet's native Wisconsin, the uniqueness of his adopted post-Katrina New Orleans and the bustle of his current home of New York City shine through in poem after poem. Five sections comprise the book, each illustrating a different facet of poetry as a means of survival in the face of modern life: "Love Songs from the Closet", focused on unrequited love and relationships; "Zen", which crystallizes moments and memories in time; "Surviving the Salt Mines", a series on persisting in the face of adversity; "Feathers", featuring short poems; and "Crazy Talk", which lets the written word and imagination run wild. With a range of styles and forms, Vogel presents an engaging tableau - all while maintaining the strong, notable undercurrent of a distinct poetic voice. As he writes in the poem "A Defense of Love", seemingly summing up his relationship to his poems: "They are me and I am glad; love shall findeth a way."
POEMS
White Hot *From Broad Meadow Bird
The lines under my eyes
Are the queues to see you,
My crowsfeet the tracks
Of a bird who wants to fly
I woke up for you this morning,
The sky finally blue
And nothing more
Perhaps it was the day I noticed
My jeans hanging loose
Or maybe the same hour my
Vision went peripheral-only
But it was there
Shortly after the love songs
Clicked, the generic pronouns
Took on a face, a smile –
It’s a long way
Even as the crow flies
I hurtle back from orbit
Ablaze, wide-eyed as the shield
Burns away, disintegrates
Orange, blue
White hot
Tears vaporized
Upon re-entry
Red Shift *From Broad Meadow Bird
I’ll paint it as I see it
Rage red smoking quivering
Bridge, Giverny ablaze
Monet with cataracts
Fuming frustrated barely undaunted
Lilies glowing with toxic heat
Japanese in its last moments
A rouge roar over
Cataract of total annihilation
Though the lenses grime and smoke
I look not away
Let the brush shudder
I ignite my canvas
Antares sears the willows
I thought of you
And the scene lit
With vicious dark light
That few suspect lies
At the center of a star
Cedar Waxwing *From Broad Meadow Bird
Who hasn't loved
late winter berries
a little too well
curlicued off branches
hammered into snowbanks
only a tuft left to tell
we do it again
imbibe, fly loopy
for we need to be cradled
now and then
plucked forth plastered and
swaddled in Carhartt
rocked til the heaving settles
til the headache takes wing
so toast me when the ice melts
hold me close in bare branches
here, far from the nest
Terminal City *From Broad Meadow Bird
She spews bitches
And assholes
From jackhammer's irate tip
Pit stains spiraling
Unclear whether the sun’s out or not
Push
Shove
NYC
The anti-love
"The Wisconsin-born peripatetic poet writes often of desire or ambition thwarted yet achieved...addressed by his sharply shaped words…"
