Fringe by Jennifer Burd

Fringe by Jennifer Burd

$15.99

 

Is Hope a thing with feathers/or a blade? What is life like when you are homeless or in prison? Burd sensitively sketches people from her life experiences and work, portrays their existence with all its sharpest edges, its heart wrenching truths. She makes visible what society makes invisible, gives us real numbers as she layers the chapbook with meanings of “fringe” and “marginal,” their implications echoing effectively through her poems. What can be more lucid than these lines about the woman whose scars are – a galaxy of stars up and down her arms, or the man who wants to learn how to read but who has to walk past shelf/after shelf of books in colorful jackets/ with their backs turned to him/, or Alan who lives in his tent saying When I sit here on a nice morning and you see the deer, and the birds flying across – it’s my house. Dare we hope? Can we bend like the grass with dew; sun comes”? It’s Burd who makes us human as we read her poems.

–Zilka Joseph, author of In Our Beautiful Bones, Sparrows and Dust, and Sharp Blue Search of Flame

 

When people are deemed “marginal” because they are imprisoned or poor or immigrants or without a home, they are too often stripped of their voice. In this powerful collection of poems, based in part on her varied career working with marginalized peoples, Jennifer Burd works to give voice to otherwise silenced narratives. Whether focused on a hot meal, a lingering kiss, or a literature class in prison, these poems pay attention to our shared humanity, and ask us to pay attention too. A lovely, empowered collection of poems.

–Andrea Scarpino, author of three books of poetry and a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press. She is Executive Director of the Noble Neighbor, which connects books and authors with kids.

 

 

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Fringe

by Jennifer Burd

$15.99, paper

979-8-88838-209-7

2023

With language that cuts to the bone, the poems in Jennifer Burd’s Fringe offer portraits of those on the ragged edges of modern society. Among these poems, readers will find a homeless man’s story of being mugged; an immigrant woman’s quest for her GED so she can leave the stifling confines of her husband’s house; the plea of a developmentally disabled man for someone to teach him to read; and prison inmates’ longings for acceptance. Letting images and stories speak for themselves, this collection brings into full view the desperation, resilience, and creativity of those who are routinely overlooked or actively brushed aside by mainstream culture. The lyric poems, framed with dictionary fragments, quotes on social inequalities, and haiku by Burd, put the reader in the spaces – inner and outer – of the marginalized. From the book’s first section, an excerpt from “Encounter”:

when Kevin tells him

he’s homeless, the guy says,

            Give me everything you’ve got

then runs away

into the dark after taking

the gloves bunched up like fists

in Kevin’s jacket pockets.

Jennifer Burd is author of two previous full-length books of poetry, Days Late Blue and Body and Echo, and a chapbook with CD, Receiving the Shore, of some of her seasonal poetry set to music by Laszlo Slomovits, She is also author of a book of creative nonfiction, Daily Bread: A Portrait of Homeless Men & Women of Lenawee County, Michigan. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print journals and anthologies. She received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington and has taught literature at Jackson Community College, Jackson, Michigan, and creative writing through The Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis.

 

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