In The Sight of Invisible Longing, Elya Braden unfurls a powerful tapestry and evocation of the depth and polarities of the human psyche, struggling to abide by desire, longing, and the challenge to accept the entirety of our souls. Beautifully woven from remnants of memory, the poet embarks upon a fresh, feministic retelling of the apple and the garden, “to purge the crime scene of your body.” Braden’s language is musical, brave, and incantatory on this empathic journey of love, grief, and loss. The poems task difficult subjects, maternal inadequacies, and the tangled consequences of our yearnings. But this collection is a holistic and consoling vision, a “spirit woven of many hands.” Luminous and wise, calling on the most delicate strands of heart and mind, Braden’s voice pierces and hoists the intimacies of our human connections. These poems are lyrical and large, fiercely impacting, reminding us of both the ache and splendor of living.
–Cynthia Atkins, author of Still-Life with God
In The Sight of Invisible Longing, Elya Braden draws us—heart, bone, and breath—into a life of harrowing and hallowed arcs, carrying us through each dark night of the soul with rigorous poems of insight and grace. As Braden summons Rilke to bolster and inform her journey, there’s room for ambiguity that soars on wings of both celebration and lament, prompting us to wonder: “So many hands clasped your arms./ Were they holding down or carrying aloft?” And to bravely recall: “In dreams of flight you are a solitary bird.” These are serious poems of genuine depth and vision.
–Michelle Bitting, winner of the DeNovo, Sacramento Poetry Center, Catamaran, and Wilder book prizes, including Nightmares & Miracles, forthcoming, 2022
Elya Braden is an astonishing poet, and this new collection of ten, linked poems based on Rilke’s Duino Elegies is proof. Illustrated by Braden’s powerful art, these poems both awe and devastate as they chronicle the poet’s transformation from destruction into power. Who would you be without the striving? What if everything you need is already within you? the poet asks. Indeed. Fine work from a very fine poet.
–Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of EROTIC: New & Selected, poetry editor, Cultural Daily.
In The Sight of Invisible Longing, we encounter the remaking of the self after severance—what happens, in this case, when a woman, long-coupled, uncouples and finds herself at sea. The unmoored speaker of these poems, with a lyrical formality of style, employs self-mythology to create the necessary distance the speaker needs to observe and report on dissolution—what breaks us apart. All of this, too, to describe what it takes and where one must go to construct a new self after the loss of intimate identifiers like wife and mother. Conjuring Lot’s wife, you walk a new path, Braden writes. Do not look back.
–Sonia Greenfield, author of Letdown
Nancy Murphy (verified owner) –
Elya Braden’s new poetry book is gorgeously crafted and deeply honest and wise. You don’t have to have read Rilke or his Duino Elegies that inspired this to appreciate and be moved by these poems. The unifying tone and style of the poems builds and intensifies the feelings evoked as you move through them. Thoroughly original, this is a contemporary narrative told from a mature vantage point that lays open and shares a journey with us. And she does it all in ten poems, each a world of its own. You can open to any page and find lines that amaze: “Like the blackberries you once hoarded/how much sweeter its flesh/ rimmed in the coppery tang/ of your fingertips’ sudden springs.” Her arresting illustrations just cement Elya’s true artist credentials!