Fossil Wings by Beverly Blatner Bagelman

Beverly Blatner Bagelman‘s brilliant, brave, and powerful collection, Fossil Wings, explores how we perceive the layers of our evolving lives, guiding stories, and shifting environment with vivid images and lyrical rhythms that linger long after we read her poetry. Just like the  “brilliant and clear” wonders found when cracking a geode, her poetry illuminates and clarifies what shines and sings from what cracks us open in this life. From a card game she played with her young daughter to an inventory of a dying sister’s possessions to the iridescence of the scars that remain, she shows us the gems and gaps that our personal histories fossilize in us. At the same time, she writes into the heart of what happens next, as in the poem, “The Mind as Archeological Site.” The hard-won wisdom of finding out more about the story over time with all its big losses and bigger love at once threads through every poem, including “Fossil Wings,” in which she writes, “The universe never sleeps./ It reimagines buried things./ It solders steel with bone/ to make your wings.”

–Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Kansas Poet Laureate Emeritus and author of How Time Moves

Beverly Bagelman’s debut chapbook, Fossil Wings (Finishing Line Press) displays a tenderness lacking in much of contemporary poetry. It is a travelogue through the vastness of the natural world while serving as an introspective examination of our place and purpose within. To find a work of such depth while retaining the beauty and quiet confidence of a master lyricist is refreshing. Bagelman is a debut poet to watch.
–Tony Burnett, managing editor, Kallisto Gaia Press and author of Watermelon Tattoo (Water Tower Press 2023)