Acts of Attention: Elizabeth Bradfield

Elizabeth Bradfield brings together recordings of poets connected to Provincetown, Massachusetts, but linked more deeply by their acts of attention—to human community and to the more-than-human world. She shares Olga Broumas’s meditation on grief in the body (“The Massacre”), Mark Doty’s simultaneous engagement with the real and the metaphoric (“Description”), and Mark Wunderlich’s tongue-in-cheek exploration of myth and monstrosity (“Milking the Minotaur”). Bradfield closes with “Considering the Hadal Zone,” a poem that circles through ocean deeps and memory.

Find the full recordings of Broumas, Doty, and Wunderlich reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:
Olga Broumas (October 26, 1988)
Mark Doty (October 13, 1993)
Mark Wunderlich (September 12, 2024)

Full transcripts of every episode are available on Buzzsprout. Look for the transcript tab under each episode.

Voca is now fully captioned, with interactive transcripts and captions available for all readings! Read more about the project here, or try out this new feature by visiting Voca.

Transcript

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[SOFT MUSIC PLAYING]

JULIE SWARSTAD JOHNSON: 0:02

Welcome to Poetry Centered, where we celebrate contemporary poets and poetry by diving into an archive of live poetry readings. In each episode, we invite a poet to introduce you to three recordings of poems from Voca, an online archive of recorded poetry readings from the University of Arizona Poetry Center. I'm Julie Swarstad Johnson, the Center's archivist, here to welcome you. Today's episode centers on place, but I keep coming back to something our guest host says at the end, which she calls"acts of attention that you give your life and the world." This is what a poet can bring to place. And these are words from the poet and naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield, whose work as a writer is intimately entangled with her training as a marine naturalist and educator. I've been an avid reader of Liz's work for the past decade and a half since I encountered her second book, Approaching Ice. It like Liz's overall body of work, merges scientific knowledge of the world with a poet's sensibility for sound, form, and gathered layers of meaning in any word. Her most recent book is SOFAR, and its poems are rooted in the oceans she loves and knows, both intellectually and emotionally. Liz makes her home on Cape Cod, and this episode emerges from that place, and specifically from Provincetown, its poets, queer community, and more than human surrounds. You'll hear waves and birds calling in the background as Liz takes us through the archive today, introducing poems by Olga Broumas, Mark Doty, and Mark Wunderlich. Touchstone poets for Provincetown, in whose work Liz admires fluid, far-reaching, but locally rooted sensibilities. Here is Elizabeth Bradfield.[SOFT MUSIC PLAYING]

ELIZABETH BRADFIELD: 2:01

Good morning. This is Elizabeth Bradfield, and I'm recording this in Truro, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, the town next door to Provincetown. And in receiving this generous invitation to explore the archives of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, it was an overwhelming experience to think about what three poems I might be able to bring forward and hold together to make a conversation with my own love of poetry and the inspiration and the lineages that help me continue forward as a writer. And I thought about queer-eco poetry. I thought about poems that engage history and research. I thought about poems about the ocean. And the more I searched the more I began centering on how place might hold a thread that would give rise to a unique conversation. This week, I'm taking a poetry workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. It's the first workshop I've actually taken since graduate school, and it's been such a gift. I'm studying with some amazing peers, and we are led by Santee Frazier. And it's made me think again and be reminded by how amazing this place is as a nurturing space for writers, for poets in particular. And so I started looking through the archive for poets connected to Provincetown. I first moved out here in the late 1990s, and it was a world so different than I'd grown up in. It held some commonalities, a connection to water, most importantly to the ocean. But to live in a small town with a deep human history, complicated but interesting. To live in a town where arts and maritime culture were so prominent, where queer culture was so prominent, it was radically different than the suburban Tacoma I was raised in. The first poem and poet I want to bring forward is a recording from 1988 by the poet Olga Broumas. And Olga, for me is a poet-- I hear this again and again, especially from people who grew up on the East Coast of the United States. A talisman, women of my own generation, her book, Beginning with O, which was chosen by Stanley Kunitz for publication, radically shifted and opened doors to a visibility of sapphic connection. And I love that phrase-- sapphic is in our contemporary cultural lingo about women-centered communities and desire. Olga Broumas had a school for women in Provincetown. Held women together in community, and poetry, desire, alternate societies were very much part of the magic that she conjured. And I never witnessed that or was part of it. It was a little bit before my time. I was on the periphery, but I heard stories about the legendary presence and community that she built. And later, I was fortunate enough to get to know Olga when in the mid, let's say 2012, actually, I won't be vague. It was 2012 when she hired me to be the visiting poet in residence at Brandeis University, where she co-directed the creative writing program. And the space that she held for undergraduates there was such an alternate space from traditional academic settings. It was, like her poems, incantatory in touch with the mythic. It was ecstatic in the ways that she held space in workshop. And this poem in particular that I bring forward is a poem titled"The Massacre." And in it she references her life as a massage therapist, which she continued and continues, I believe, until this day working on the Cape. And that idea of wordless work-- the breath, the body, hands-- and the work of the poet-- the breath, the body, hands. And what they stitched together, I find really moving and meaningful. And I think that coming up through that, the upwelling of caring for people and understanding the great histories that connect us. For Olga, it's always been her Greek ancestry. She was born and grew up in Greece. Speaking Greek, knowing deeply and intimacy, the literary history of Greece, and that's always threaded through her work, something that I've always admired. And that sense of Greece and the history of the people of those islands holds tragedy as well, holds massacre. And the way that she holds together, those different layerings of time. Greece contemporary AIDS crisis. And also, even in 1988, she was writing about the Palestinian people and the horrors that they have suffered. And I think that's revelatory to me in thinking about how poets have continued to engage. And she references in particular the friends of the dead, which I find so meaningful and moving as a way of engaging both those who care for those moving from being with the living world to becoming with the dead and those themselves who are on the cusp of that journey. So this is Olga Broumas from 1988, reading, "The Massacre."[MUSIC PLAYING]

OLGA BROUMAS: 9:04

Part of what I do for a living out in Provincetown is I'm a massage therapist. It's a wonderful profession for a poet. It's very quiet, very direct to make people happy. This is a long poem called "The Massacre." And part two makes reference to that. It also makes reference to the friends of the dead. We, out in Provincetown, have lost a great number of our friends to AIDS. The poem begins with a reference to Xerxes, who was a Persian King way, way back, and I don't know, fifth century, maybe before that. And the Persians were always invading Greece, you know. They were always after us. And he had come up to the Bosporus, where Constantinople, Istanbul is now. It was trying to cross the water to come down and invade Greece one more time, and the waters were not friendly. He was not able to sail. And they waited, and his army waited, and they waited and they waited. And finally, they were getting very restless, and he ordered his men to whip the ocean. This was taught to us in grade school as an exercise in futility, but there are other ways to look at it."The Massacre." I understand Xerxes command To wield the whips On the intractable, bereaving apron of the sea. I beat the foam with racquet and with bat, Hoping the tangled plant in my therapist's office Will escape the havoc of my grief. And when it thrives from week to week, Increase the fervor of my sickle arms, Sowing the calm air in her witness. A murderous growl like a machete Flattens the delicate bronchi Where the lungs come to a stem. The ghosts are with us, Poured from bruised tissue like the blood I spray, embarrassed, on cream sheets. My scream is tireless, My arm its pump. I hate the arrogant poet Who last night remarked, How much the natives recollect their wars. Behind the birthplace of the ancient memory He came to paste onto his suitcase Between Rome and Istanbul, Berlin, New York, A gaggle of invaders Around the nameless, dusty, unmarked shore-- Young Homer roamed. Suitcase rhymes with exile Only for a native. I had to learn It rhymes with the Bahamas For the touring clerks Who keep the books That feed on distant, ill-remembered war. Two Germans walking home one dusk Cracked a boy's arm across their thigh bone Like a faggot And threw him on the pavement, writhing. It was full. The fabled light of Athens Shone on the protruding bone. Their boots were new. They raised the infected dust, And in the silence of the boy's disbelief and pride, The untold eons hide. Two. The friends of the dead lie in my table. I do what I can With their breath in my hands. Witless, the birds are singing. The crocus-garland month lengthens our light. I want it always to be light. I fight the night and win. I peel my eye against the black-and-white TV Until it dawns, then sleep. The Palestinian and Boston homeless Split the screen. Number of children living on Brazilian streets-- What is 40 million? Jeopardy's prey fill the camera, Their stripped and stunning faces Emblazoned in the halogen, A kind of sustained lightning. And the peasant heart Who counts the seconds between flash And fall of thunder Shrinks from the looming toll. Horror is toxic. The lesions on our organs keep the score. The gentle and the harder Being taken in legions. And the globe might shake us off its flank Like quarry dust And start again with something less free, Less wrecked by greed, But it suffers us on its blue cetacean patience Like festered barnacles, Like counted sheep mid-air over a stream. The friends of the dead pause on my table. The shofar is ringing like starlight, Too young to have reached us. I do what I can With their breath in my hands.[SOFT MUSIC PLAYING]

ELIZABETH BRADFIELD: 14:07

The next poem and poet I'm bringing forward today from all of the riches I have to choose from in this archive is the poet Mark Doty, and this is a reading of his from 1993. And Mark Doty is another poet who's personally significant to me. When I first moved to Provincetown, he had a little home on the same street as the Fine Arts Work Center. And he references it in many of his poems and in his memoir. The roses out the front were beautiful. And I loved walking home after work. I worked at the Fine Arts Work Center when I first moved here as a website and graphic designer. As a little office grunt, to be honest, invisible to the luminaries who passed through, like Mark Doty, who was a kind and generous human. When I was trying to come back to myself more fully as a writer living in Provincetown, then I took a workshop at Castlehill Center for the Arts here in Truro. Just last week, I was fortunate enough to teach there myself. And it's a little bit of a different world from Provincetown, a little quieter, a little sleepier. I think it's probably what I needed in 1999 or 2000. I can't remember exactly what year it was, when I was trying to rededicate myself to an active, poetic life, and trying to find a place for myself in the community of Provincetown, the outer Cape. And Mark Doty's workshop was really such a generous and generative time for me. A turning point for me in many ways. And I recognize in his attention to detail and in the ways that he bridged the more than human world, natural history, and also the queer community was something that I wanted to nurture within myself. And so he was a teacher in that way as well. And the poem that he's reading here is a poem titled"Description." And I love, like with Olga Broumas, the way that water enters this poem of fluid poetics that can't stay bound to the shores of Cape Cod. Can't stay bound to our local water, because the ocean doesn't. Quite literally, those currents flow, and eventually touch the shores of every continent on this planet, in these deep, wide water cycles. This idea of the permeability, of metaphor, of language, of water. And this poem starts off locally in the Salt Marsh of Provincetown, which is such a beautiful, magical space. If you haven't spent time by a Salt Marsh, you have these in summer, lush green grasses floating and marking the channels of this glinting water. And you can swim through them or admire the way light shifts within them. And as a naturalist, I know that in those waters you've got young fish that will become and swim out into wider waters. You've got mussels, lobster, crabs, this whole ecosystem of beings that are shaded and sheltered. And the Marsh itself protects our shores, is a buffer against storm surge. And all of that is concrete and real and also metaphoric. And I think is an important background for what Mark Doty brings to this poem. And I love that he challenges in this poem the idea that through the particulars, the way to the universal, as he puts it. He challenges it in the poem, but the poem actually ends up supporting that idea. That through the particulars, we understand these vaster connections. And how it comes down to him for what glimmers. And isn't writing a poem about finding what glimmers for us in particular? What particular glimmers speak to us as poets? How for him the Marsh is one vast conjugation of the verb to shine a gleam awakened and doubled by water. But that doesn't stay contained to the Marsh. It moves into town, into the shops, where the glittering trinkets and jewelries of the world beckon us as well. My friend Anne Haven MacDonnell, the poet, we were laughing a year ago or so because someone was criticizing her work, because they felt that it was, quote unquote,"just description." But what isn't beautiful about description? And when we truly attend and describe, it doesn't stay centered just on the object at hand. We find everything that description is connected to the vastness of the world. So here's Mark Doty reading "Description."[SOFT MUSIC PLAYING]

MARK DOTY: 19:42

And thus this poem, which is called "Description." My salt marsh-- Mine, I call it, because These day-hammered fields Of dazzled horizontals Undulate, summers, Inside me and out. How can I say what it is? Sea lavender shivers Over the tidewater steel. A million minnows ally With their million shadows Lucky will never need To know whose is whose. The Bud of storm loosens, Watered paint poured Dark blue onto the edge Of the page. Haloed grasses, Gilt shadow-edged body of dune. I could go on like this. I love the language Of the days ten thousand aspects, The creases and flecks In the map, these Brilliant gouaches. But I'm not so sure It's true what I was taught. That through the particulars, The way to the universal. What I need to tell Is swell and curve, shift and blur of boundary, Tremble and spilling over A heady purity distilled from detail, A metaphor then In this tourist town, The retail legions purvey The far flung worlds bangles, Brilliance of Nepal and Mozambique Any place where cheap labor Braids, or burnishes, or hammers found Stuff into jewelries lush grammar, A whole vocabulary of ornament. Copper and lacquer, Shells and seeds from backwaters With fragrant names, Millefiori milled into African beads, Mexican abalone, Camel bone and tin, Cinnabar and verdigris, Silver, black onyx, coral, gold, One vast conjugation of the verb to shine. And that is the marsh essence. All the hoarded riches of the world Held and rivering, A gleam awakened and doubled by water, Flashing off the bowing of the grass. Jewelry, tides, language, Things that shine, What is description, after all, But encoded desire. And if we say the marsh, If we forge terms for it, Then isn't it contained in us A little, the brightness?[APPLAUSE] Thanks. I wanted to begin with that, that poem, partly because I want to talk about place, but also because I hope it opens a consideration about language, the nature of naming what we see or naming what we love that perhaps other poems here might comment upon as well.[SOFT MUSIC PLAYING]

ELIZABETH BRADFIELD: 23:33

The final poet I've chosen is the poet Mark Wunderlich, and his poem read in 2024"Milking the Minotaur." I mentioned earlier, these weird convergences of time. Just this week, I was walking down the street and noticed Mark walking up the other way and shouted across, "Mark." It took him a minute to recognize me. We don't know each other well, but enough to say hello. And had a beautiful conversation, and I love-- again, the smallness of this community and how you run into these poets and writers and going about their daily lives and think about all of the threads and the currents that touch us similarly, and yet are expressed so differently through our work. It also happens to be Bear Week in Provincetown, which figures into Mark's poem, and I'll let him define what Bear Week is. It's a joyous week for me. A week of abundance and celebration. So those ideas of community. I also appreciate that in the introduction to this poem, Mark mentions that it came from a challenge that emerged in a conversation with the poets Donika Kelly and Stacey D'Erasmo, both writers who I hugely admire. And that idea of community of being in conversation with writers, I was talking with my friend, the poet Michael McGriff, the other day, and we were just speaking about what a joy it is to have continued as a writer, to have been writing and speaking with other writers, to kept connection with writers we first met in workshop, maybe as undergraduates, maybe in graduate school, maybe in a community workshop, who knows. But for those of us who have continued writing, all of a sudden now, we have these friends who have brought beautiful books into the world and it's just such a gift not only to celebrate the moments when they are celebrated, but also just to be part of a group of people who have continued and who I'm able now to see across decades and to see through different stages in their work. That is one of the real unexpected gifts of being a writer. This poem by Mark Wunderlich also involves the sea. He references Herring Cove, which is just a delicious beach for swimming here in Provincetown. And again, that fluidity and the way that ocean influences the experience of this place. And he also, like Olga Broumas, brings in the Greeks, although from a different vantage point, entirely through"Milking the Minotaur." And I think I also wanted to bring this poem forward because of its deeply queer sensibility. The way it celebrates queer desire and connection and celebrates bodies and sensuality that is censored or censured against still in many communities. And the gift of having a place and a community that allows that desire to flourish, namely, Provincetown, is also another gift that I want to celebrate and honor and offer up gratitude for. So here is Mark Wunderlich reading and introducing "Milking the Minotaur."[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARK WUNDERLICH: 27:38

OK, so this next poem I'm going to-- it has a dedication, but I'm dedicating to Ander Monson, actually. This poem resulted as a challenge, and I will apologize ahead of time. This poem is in terrible taste. And I just have to fully acknowledge that. It arose out of a challenge. I was having a conversation with two wonderful writers, Stacey D'Erasmo and the poet Donika Kelley. And Stacey was recalling an experience she had of coming across a pornographic novel which was called Morning Glory Farm, a Sweet and Steamy Monster Romance book. Now, we were having a conversation as writers about how the kinds of books that sell thousands and thousands of copies. And this is one of them. This book, Morning Glory Farm, a Sweet and Steamy Monster Romance book, is one of those. Though, she erroneously identified the title. She thought the title was"Milking the Minotaur," which is actually the plot. And it is a story of a young woman who answers an ad for a job, and she gets this job at a farm, where the livestock of the farm are minotaurs. And it is her job to milk the minotaurs. But the minotaurs are male, so she is extracting semen from the minotaurs. It is a romance novel. It has sold hundreds of thousands of copies. But I thought this title,"Milking the Minotaur," was one of the most hilarious things that I had ever heard. And so Donika said, I think you should write a poem called"Milking the Minotaur." And I said to her, I think you should write a poem called"Milking the Minotaur." And so we signed a pact that we were both going to do it, and indeed, we did. So this is the poem. It is, as I said, it's in very poor taste. And it is called"Milking the Minotaur." A gloss here, Bear Week. Does anybody know what Bear Week is? Maybe not. Bear Week takes place in Provincetown, Massachusetts, A gay resort where large bodied and hairy men and those who like them gather all together to appreciate each other. And it's called Bear Week. And Sniffies is a hookup app, a GPS hookup app. I refer to that too. So it just "Milking the Minotaur." Apologies in advance. Minotaurs aren't real, So they cannot feel it When you milk them, Squeezing the hairy teat of myth. And wasn't the Minotaur male In this imaginary mammary fantasy-- So maybe milking is extraction In the mode of man-on-man pornography, In which a veiny male member Is milked into climax. Do I embarrass you? But you're already here. And poetry is so embarrassing, sometimes in the extreme. Speaking of which, I'm writing this whilst naked On Herring Cove beach. The story of this bovine fancy Reaching all the way down this windy strand. The gods are, so we're told, are dead. They are also amoral, Neither good nor bad, Just moods, plots, urge. I watch the tide surge against the sandy shore And wonder if I am perhaps A bit of a Milky Minotaur myself, Expressing my imaginary milk With the other monsters gazing on Like at some sixty-man Bear Week Sniffies circlejerk. I've always known I was a kind of monster, One whose body is a little ugly And out of control Whose wants are camped well outside Convention like some forgotten, Moldy, blue tarp Adirondack tent. What are we meant to do With unauthorized desires If we are not, say, Some rich horse-crazy girl Braiding and unbraiding her chestnut gelding's mane Before straddling him And taking up the crop, Whipping him into a frothed-up Gallop across daddy's well-groomed terrain. I can't feign ignorance, Effect indifference as I don my jockstrap, Cock ring, kaftan, and pearls Minotaurs, Medusa, old Sycorax imprisoned in a tree-- All the monsters end up pursued By some dumb hero, Clubbed, beheaded, dead. The myth is there to warn us monsters Of what can be done To us, or in us, or on us, To tell us we are obscene With our horns and hairy tails, Our scalp of writhing snakes Everyone's a fake, Except us monsters who are real, Or just really bad at hiding From main characters as they blunder, Confident through their own lives And through ours, Their swords raised in bloody triumph As they shame themselves with power.[SOFT MUSIC PLAYING]

ELIZABETH BRADFIELD: 33:28

As for my own poem, it was hard to choose. But I think this one touches upon Olga Broumas, Mark Doty, and Mark Wunderlich in different ways. It's from my new collection of poems just published in 2025, titled SOFAR-- Poems. And I want to say that SOFAR is both what it sounds like, and an acronym for the sound frequency and ranging channel, which is a layer of water in the ocean. That if you go down deep enough, the pressure increases, the temperature decreases, and you get this layer of water that acts like a fiber optic cable does for light, sound bouncing along it and traveling vast, vast distances in the ocean. And that idea of listening across vast distances about what the ocean allows and connects is really meaningful to me as a naturalist who is very centered in the marine world. And also having spent the past three decades of my life working as a naturalist, both on local whale watches and further afield and helping out with various biology research projects in the field, primarily with whales and seals. This poem is titled"Considering the Hadal Zone," and it's set here in Provincetown harbor, actually, and ranges elsewhere. You should know that cusk-eels are a type of fish that exist here off of Cape Cod. I mention and bring back to Olga's engagement with the AIDS epidemic, which was a huge moment of Provincetown's history in the late '80s. I mention also the sub that went to visit the Titanic. I'm talking about the tourist submarine that sank. And I mention love and connection. This is the first time I've said this in a public way. But I wrote the poems of SOFAR 30 years into a relationship that I thought was going to continue for 30 more years. I thought we were in a rough patch, and it was interesting to explore what it meant to hold that love despite challenges. Now, reading these poems, that's no longer true. These poems are now marking the end of a 30-year relationship. And I hold those poems in both of those lights."Considering the Hadal Zone," it's a sectioned poem. One. Cusk-eels in the harbor, Ratchet for love, All August, We hear them buzz at night, Desire sounded as thumb up Washboard pulsed from Where we anchor. The deepest ocean Trenches are named for Hades, God of the underworld, Who waits for love to fall to him. In that dark, Isopods feed on what drifts Down from sunlit water, Tissue, eelgrass, ship wood, Fukushima's radionuclides. Two. The seafloor is mapped by satellites That ping the ocean surface And factor out the waves that pass across it, Leaving swells and dimples Pushed or pulled by peaks And trenches deep below. Proof that what's hidden Can still be sensed. Three, There's a quartzite block, A half fathom high And larger than a king-size bed To the East of Provincetown's town hall. Its surface ripples with small waves Stilled forever, Memorial to the disease That flooded this town in the '80s, Stormed those who held And cared for all who fell to them From places that would not hold care. I like to imagine inside the block, Delicate, sensitive forms drifting And brushing each other like cilia, sargassum, or tentacles. Four. As a kid, My dream was to live On the sea floor, In a domed house of glass. Last summer, On the Labrador ferry Coming in to Natuashish, We passed the ship That weeks before had launched the sub That went to visit the Titanic And never came back. On the ferry deck, A buzz everywhere at once And hard to locate, Like sound underwater to human ears. There are kids on deck, I'd quit for sure. Is that the crew in lawn chairs? Is that really? They must be. So where are they going? Can you imagine. I hear the family, How long do you think they waited? Five. I wear both our wedding rings And your father's too On my right ring finger. They click quietly. Some cusk-eels thrive In the hadal zones, Dark crush. The articles don't say If they make any sound. So thank you to the University of Arizona Poetry Center's archives. Thank you to the hosts of this podcast and their generous invitation to all the poets who have shared their work so generously. The gift of being asked to spend time listening, and attending, and considering is more meaningful than I can say. I really appreciate being part of this community as well. And to everyone who's listening, I hope that the connections you're able to make with poems, with writers, with ideas, and with place-- the acts of attention that you give your life and the world-- are deeply rewarding. Thank you again. Yours in poetry. Goodbye.[SOFT MUSIC PLAYING]

JULIE SWARSTAD JOHNSON: 40:22

You've been listening to Elizabeth Bradfield, and this is Poetry-Centered. Liz, what a gorgeous episode. I'm so thankful for the acts of attention that you have given to the world. Thank you for encouraging us all to do the same. Thank you also for bringing us into the place where you're recording. I loved hearing what I think were maybe blue jays there at the end. Listeners, thank you for being here with us. Thank you for the attention and the care that you bring to your own places and your own communities. This is the final episode in our current season of new offerings. So it'll be a few months before we're back with you again. If you're new to the show, we have a great back catalog for you to explore, each with different approaches and different poets voices to enjoy. We also have more than thousand hours of recorded poetry readings for you to enjoy at your leisure by visiting Voca at voca.arizona.edu. Explore the archive and find your own favorites. Thanks again for being with us, and take care.

ARIA PAHARI: 41:30

Poetry-Centered is a project of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, home to a world-class library of more than 135,000 items related to contemporary poetry in English and English translation. Located on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson. The Poetry Center library and buildings are housed on the Indigenous homelands of the Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui. Poetry-Centered is the work of Aria Pahari-- that's me-- and Julie Swarstad Johnson. Explore Voca-- the Poetry Center's audio visual archive online at voca.arizona.edu.