Kate Fadick
ISBN: 978-0-9975805
25 pages
In Self-Portrait as Hildegard of Bingen, Kate Fadick has visions. Fadick revels in the beauties and wonders of our world, taking them deeply into her body — and foresees its, and our, extinction. These poems are timeless and universal but are particularly ripe for the current political environment in the United States under a new President Trump. In "In my dream of Hildegard," Fadick writes, "we turn to face the worst/ our kind can do// our bodies spinning/ death of stars// woven with all that lives". Fadick observes with a kind of view-from-beyond that "here on the steep rock/ face of the coming extinction// one weedy species/ wails a broken note or two" in "Antigone's Birds." These poems are prophetic, at once doom-seeing and hopeful: the painful truths and their poultices. These poems will see us through; they will be here "while the sun/ turns red and// stars break through// … and the first berries/ ripen in the coming/ darkness". As Fadick tells us, "These are the poems made of glass// blown at the edge/ of the bent world".
— Elizabeth Twiddy, author of Love-Noise
Glass Poetry Press
Precision · Vision · Inclusion
Self-Portrait as Hildegard of Bingen
Cover by Kate Fadick
$8.50
Sample poem from Self-Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen:
Blasphemy or Elegance
a feast of blueberries
as the empty bowl
fills with
red trillium uprooted
from the old woods
to ease
the coming silence
that holds distance
leans into
indigo grief stained
glass window filled
with light the child touches
green then blue
then yellow laughs
announces
I have a golden hand
Kate Fadick began working seriously as a poet in 2009. Prior to then, they worked with rural and urban Appalachian communities on issues of environmental and economic justice. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Still: The Journal, Indianola Review, Kudzu, Pine Mountain, Sand and Gravel, Wind '97, Blue Lyra Review and other regional journals. Slipstream, their first chapbook, was released by Finishing Line Press in March, 2013. They live in Cincinnati, OH with their partner of 25 years.
