$14.99
In this radiant collection of poems, Fran Baird casts light on memory and the present moment, on family and the natural world, with keen observation and brave reflection. Like the autobiographical speaker in “Stone Beach, Westport, Massachusetts,” he gathers what’s discarded in order to “throw them in the tumbler” and “begin polishing.” Ultimately he’s on a spiritual quest, but he finds its talismans and icons in the everyday, as in the marvelous, moving title poem, which develops memories of his father’s guidance about “the world of paint” into a credo: “I want to do this all my life. Stare, as the sunlight / pours through every window.” Fran Baird’s poems revel in revelations, which he delivers in a welcoming voice that gladly shares his findings.
–John Philip Drury, author of Sea Level Rising.
Fran Baird‘s debut chapbook, “Painting with My Father,” gives us a much-needed glimpse into the heart of a man trying to figure out what it means to be a man— son, father, sibling, lover, and how to do it with integrity. Baird writes with plain-speech that contains surprise and revelation. His tough father, a painter of walls and houses, turns tender when he tells his son, “Stay in school, you don’t want to do this all your life.” And later in the book, the poet/brother says, “But this is no dream, this is memory. In that other poem I have her / say she never loved me, but I know that isn’t true. We were / the youngest in a horde of children trying not to die of hunger.” This is a beautiful debut that refuses sentimentality and does not make excuses; it wrestles with complicated questions about love, God, and being alive, in all its miraculous mundanity.
–Amy Small-McKinney, author of Walking Toward Cranes, Kithara Prize 2016, Glass Lyre Press.
Fran Baird‘s poems use language as transportive as a dreamscape; yet, beneath what captures scenes as serene as the sky when “light pink begins to appear brushing the creases,” his words are very often an arrow right to the heart of the matter: “you are not what we are looking for” or in the last line of the title poem, “love with the gentle touch you taught me.” So, “just because I waited long enough,” lines of Fran’s poetry explain our universal experience. He asks, “Are we swimming to shore?/ Are we climbing up again?” Yes, we are both safe wrapped in the poems’ secure hold on us, but also asked time and time again to reach further, to reach up and find the unexpected: to climb up using Fran’s words for footholds into the vastness of the heart.
–Julia Blumenreich, author of Blue Angel of a Day, The Moonstone Press.
One’s own family is a difficult subject to be candid about, but reading Fran Baird’s poems, you feel as though they were written under oath: they contain all the truth and nothing but the truth. He has a storyteller’s knack for drawing in the reader and you’re already deeply engrossed in these poems before realizing that you’re reading the work of a subtly gifted poetic craftsman as well.
–David Kertis, Philadelphia poet, author of Word of the Day (2015).
Fran Baird is the consummate storyteller. His poetic voice resounds with close attention to color and the natural world, as he says in the poem “Stone Beach…,” “I gather the discarded,… throw them in the tumbler…/…begin polishing.” Nothing escapes his careful examination: not his family, not himself, not this troubled earthbound life. But there’s a tenderness in the way he observes each imperfection: the image of the child under the table, reading his father’s rejection letters shellacked above his head from “The Writer’s Son” surfaces. This chapbook plumbs the emotional depth of this world, and Baird the poet is the Rembrandt-of-words his father first named.
–Liz Chang, 2012 Montgomery County Poet Laureate and author of Animal Nocturne.
Painting with my father
by Fran Baird
$14.99, paper
978-1-63534-826-2
2019
Fran Baird was born in Philadelphia, the youngest of 12 children. He is a 2009 Pushcart Prize nominee and currently studies with poet Leonard Gontarek. He resides in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Bernadette. They have three grown children.
John Drury –
In this radiant collection of poems, Fran Baird casts light on memory and the present moment, on family and the natural world, with keen observation and brave reflection. Like the autobiographical speaker in “Stone Beach, Westport, Massachusetts,” he gathers what’s discarded in order to “throw them in the tumbler” and “begin polishing.” Ultimately he’s on a spiritual quest, but he finds its talismans and icons in the everyday, as in the marvelous, moving title poem, which develops memories of his father’s guidance about “the world of paint” into a credo: “I want to do this all my life. Stare, as the sunlight / pours through every window.” Fran Baird’s poems revel in revelations, which he delivers in a welcoming voice that gladly shares his findings.
Amy Small-McKinney –
Fran Baird‘s debut chapbook, “Painting with My Father,” gives us a much-needed glimpse into the heart of a man trying to figure out what it means to be a man— son, father, sibling, lover, and how to do it with integrity. Baird writes with plain-speech that contains surprise and revelation. His tough father, a painter of walls and houses, turns tender when he tells his son, “Stay in school, you don’t want to do this all your life.” And later in the book, the poet/brother says, “But this is no dream, this is memory. In that other poem I have her / say she never loved me, but I know that isn’t true. We were / the youngest in a horde of children trying not to die of hunger.” This is a beautiful debut that refuses sentimentality and does not make excuses; it wrestles with complicated questions about love, God, and being alive, in all its miraculous mundanity.
Julia Blumenreich (verified owner) –
Fran Baird‘s poems use language as transportive as a dreamscape; yet, beneath what captures scenes as serene as the sky when “light pink begins to appear brushing the creases,” his words are very often an arrow right to the heart of the matter: “you are not what we are looking for” or in the last line of the title poem, “love with the gentle touch you taught me.” So, “just because I waited long enough,” lines of Fran’s poetry explain our universal experience. He asks, “Are we swimming to shore?/ Are we climbing up again?” Yes, we are both safe wrapped in the poems’ secure hold on us, but also asked time and time again to reach further, to reach up and find the unexpected: to climb up using Fran’s words for footholds into the vastness of the heart.
David Kertis –
One’s own family is a difficult subject to be candid about, but reading Fran Baird’s poems, you feel as though they were written under oath: they contain all the truth and nothing but the truth. He has a storyteller’s knack for drawing in the reader and you’re already deeply engrossed in these poems before realizing that you’re reading the work of a subtly gifted poetic craftsman as well.
Liz Chang –
Fran Baird is the consummate storyteller. His poetic voice resounds with close attention to color and the natural world, as he says in the poem “Stone Beach…,” “I gather the discarded,… throw them in the tumbler…/…begin polishing.” Nothing escapes his careful examination: not his family, not himself, not this troubled earthbound life. But there’s a tenderness in the way he observes each imperfection: the image of the child under the table, reading his father’s rejection letters shellacked above his head from “The Writer’s Son” surfaces. This chapbook plumbs the emotional depth of this world, and Baird the poet is the Rembrandt-of-words his father first named.
Leonard Gontarek, author of Take Your Hand Out Of My Pocket, Shiva –
Painting With My Father is a magnificent book. These are lived poems – and Fran Baird would not let them go out in the world until they reached the level of the experience. They took time. Hence, their wisdom and extraordinary beauty in the best tradition of Poetry.
There is brilliance and grace and nobility in this poetry, qualities that we recognize inhabit the man who wrote it. They are the products of a world that always leans toward the good and the poems are equal to it. They are reports from the other side in a music of language that is intelligent, inquisitive, celebratory and sure.
Let me recommend, along with the title poem, What Does It Know; Stone Beach, Westport, Massachusetts (where our poet is part Demosthenes, part Charon); Just Because I Waited Long Enough (light pink begins to appear / brushing the creases); Desperate Day; Take My Advice; Stripping The Paint From An Old Park Bench; and the great final poem of the
collection, To Answer The Question: Are You A Spirit Or Ghost?
You can almost hear the comforting, soft strokes of a paintbrush – expert and affectionate, as you turn the pages. It is a deep pleasure to watch Fran Baird work wonders in his poems.
Carl LeFong –
Fabulous fanciful fulsome fearful fecund faulty flawlessly fruitful
From the Halls of Seventeenth and Stiles to the shores of Sea Isle City
To read Fran is to re live our common wild wonderful winsome wander lustre youths on the Basketball courts adventures of long forgotten endless nights .
Canny cagey crafty Fran was always too clever by half. These wondrous words connect the dots of sixty years hence soaring searing shimmering soulfully into the ether of sober salubrious salient Nirvannah Charonless and Welcome.
Thanks Fran !!!!