Mother Is a Body - by Brandi Katherine Herrera (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Sonic and typographic experimentation collide in this book-length poem in seven sections. MOTHER IS A BODY is a visceral and immediate exploration of the female body, and that which is continually forced upon it, as Herrera considers what it means to be mothered, and to mother in return.

Through a cyclical process of imagining, conceiving, assigning, emptying, MOTHER IS A BODY at once renounces and reveres the notion of the sacred feminine, to illustrate "mother" in her many actualities -- a complex figure, at times unsightly, that both is and isn't what we most often ascribe to her as an archetype of the divine.

Overseen by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Clarice Lispector, Miriam Medrez, and Yoko Ono, Herrera pieces together material excavated from within Instagram's endless scroll, Wikipedia's citations, and even the U.S. Department of Agriculture's archives to create a layered inscription -- musically, emotionally, philosophically -- to the idea of motherhood, and the children she never had.

Review Quotes

"MOTHER IS A BODY is a beautiful and considered book with a cadence that shifts, building intensity as the reader moves through its pages. The series of redaction/footnote poems in Herrera's collection clearly shows that when something is removed we are not left with something lesser, but instead something completely different."--Alyson Provax

"Brandi Katherine Herrera's writing is so piercing and so beautiful. Meaning is questioned, meaning is made and shattered-all markers of a singular yet vast relationship to the body, to the mother, to the self, and to the lines of flight and multiplicities of the word and the image we should all be considering."-- "Sky Hopinka, author of Around the Edge of Encircling Lake"

"Brilliantly conceived, MOTHER IS A BODY creates a physicality so visceral I vibrate as I read. The opening audio duet soothes-n-rattles through repetitive figures reminiscent of Steve Reich's slow harmonic rhythms. Color sensations flood this hybrid collection with an elegant intelligence, shifting forms serially. In one section, verdant stanzas cut lines--'lawns mowed/ in the same/ direction.' Mid-book, the font of a prose rant piles upon itself typographically to become the exquisite visual lattice of an empty lace baby bonnet. Elsewhere, sonic portraits let the unborn live, erasing the 'divinity, ' 'artifice, ' 'monotony, ' and 'anxiety' of mother's longing. Capturing what C.D. Wright called 'the marvels that come by sight, sound and touch, ' Herrera teaches us to design beautiful sorrow."--Lori Anderson Moseman "Persona"

"In this powerful and expertly observed collection, Brandi Katherine Herrera grapples with the terrible teleology forced on the female body. MOTHER IS A BODY, and Mother is form that perpetually folds into her function. Whether a woman rejects or accepts this function by having a child is beside the point: either way, she is estranged from herself. Herrera has kicked open the hope chest of received ideas to free the living woman locked inside, and to ask the (still) radical question: who is she? Who is she, if not an image on endless scroll, captioned by one or another cliché? Is she more than 'a language without / articulation, ' or umbilicus to a child? Who would she be if untethered from these 'purposes?' Is such a woman possible?"-- "Lisa Wells, author of Believers"

"These poems are MOTHERCONSCIOUSNESS. Herrera's patterns and formations are a guiding intelligence and thrilling. Artphoric and literamatic. Is it okay to say this book is thrilling? When I read it I felt I had recouped a will inside my psyche to be better at living among others and pain. That direct challenge to the WORLD and its IMPOSSIBILITIES provided wild relief. 'What is a mother but / another way to empty / ourselves into ourselves'..."-- "Dot Devota, author of The Division of Labor"

About the Author

Brandi Katherine Herrera is an artist whose work in text, image, and sound explores the poetics of color and space. She is the author of Mutterfarbe and Natürlicher, (Broken Cloud Press, 2016); a co-author of MAR (Lute & Cleat, 2018); and co-editor of The Lake Rises (Stockport Flats, 2013). Her work is held in the Seattle Art Museum's permanent collection, Yale University's Faber Birren Collection, UCLA's Louise M. Darling Archive, University at Buffalo's Poetry Collection, and Reed College's Special Collections & Archives, and has been featured by the Seattle Art Museum, Cube Gallery, 23 Sandy Gallery, Poetry Press Week, The Volta, Octopus Magazine, The Common, Poor Claudia, Word/For Word, and Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, among others.