Bradfield Reviews and Q&A

The criticisms of Bradfield's poetry offer interesting insights. Jordan Davis' criticism begins with a precursor to his actual criticism of Bradfield's poetry in which he describes his form of criticism. At the end of this first paragraph, Davis states, "At best, this criticism is a Goldilocks affair of looking for the just right in a hunting lodge full of chairs and beds too big and too small." In a way, this is how I felt in reading Bradfield's collection, Approaching Ice. It was difficult to find a comfortable ground when dipping in between the present and the past to find meaning in the poems. Davis did have several criticisms about the use of language in Bradfield's first collection, Interpretive Work, but I did not find these criticisms to have much standing with relation to her most recent collection. I found that Davis a higher message of hope in Bradfield's poems. At the end of the review, he commends Bradfield's style and indicates that her approach to the ever-changing nature is needed the present day chaos.

In the second review, Jon Christensen focuses on Bradfield's attempt to "challenge the idea of queerness as not 'natural.'" I would have to read more of her first collection to relate to this point however I find this argument interesting in the larger context of Bradfield's poetry. As a naturalist, Bradfield's approach to queerness resonates strongly with me. Especially references to her poem, "Creation Myth" in which Bradfield refers to scientific explanations of female deer growing antlers. The mingling of queer poetry and naturalistic poetry is powerfully portrayed in Bradfield's poems. As she describes in her Q&A she tries to set the polar expeditions with the contemporary ideas of sexuality, race, gender and identity.

I watched a video on youtube in which Bradfield describes the significance of her poems. She discusses how sound is the major influence of her poems. How she hears something and she has to put it on paper. She also discusses how her work in naturalism creates the scope of her poems. I would love to know how sound and naturalism provide the inspiration for her poems. What kind of sounds ring that must be written down? How does Naturalism offer itself to be capture in words and in poems? Is it ever challenging to capture such a sublime force of nature into a single poem or collection of poems?