Each day leading up to the April 16 announcement of the Minnesota Book Awards, and in collaboration with community editors from the award-winning Saint Paul Almanac, we highlight one of the thirty-two finalists. Today we feature 2016 Poetry finalist:
Borrowed Wave by Rachel Moritz
Published by Kore Press
Category Sponsor: Wellington Management
Synopsis by Clarence White, Saint Paul Almanac:
Rachel Moritz says that the titles of her poems come from music. When I first paid attention to poetry, that strange genre that made little sense to my linear, prose-prone brain, that is how I consumed it, as a kind of music, fitting the words into an imagined pop or jazz tempo. Moritz makes her own music in her new book of poetry: Borrowed Wave.
On March 10 at “First Books with Creative Writing MFA Alums,” Jonah Sirott, novelist and—like Rachel—a fellow University of Minnesota MFA writing program alum, shared the stage with Rachel. He talked about writing and studying in different genres, how poetry taught so much about the negative or white spaces in writing. So much of Rachel’s work is not just about the visual white spaces, but the negative spaces that can be created with language—with nouns and verbs that make the mind wander to the dark side of the orbiting satellites of images she runs together in her poetic melodies.
In addition to Borrowed Wave (Kore Press, 2015), Moritz is the author of five poetry chapbooks. Her poems have been published in American Letters and Commentary, Aufgabe, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, 26, TYPO, Verse Daily, and VOLT. Among her awards are three fellowships from the Minnesota State Arts Board, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, and a residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.
Rachel Moritz received her MFA from the University of Minnesota. She has taught writing in community and academic settings, including Hamline University, Macalester College, the University of Minnesota, and The Loft Literary Center. She lives with her partner and son in Minneapolis, where she teaches creative writing in the community.
An Excerpt from Borrowed Wave:
BORROWED WAVE
(In childhood, a caught space)
Your Nana was ironing sheets
in her Lemon Joy kitchen.
Wings without body, linen snagged on the lip
of her board. Was she a bird?
‘I can smell the rubbers in the front entry
as I sat on the hall-tree seat and hunted
for my galoshes,’ she wrote,
remembering how an object locates—
You were drinking milk from her blue Delft tea-
cup. By the slice of window you lifted up
her teacup, left a rim of white on blue flowers.
Little moths or butterflies, parting waves.
Reviews:
“The startling beauty of Rachel Moritz’s poems serves a different purpose. This beauty spatializes experience as an exquisite, if partially remembered—wavering—landscape. In that way, Moritz employs the beautiful as a tool that teaches us to be suspicious of time, space, and experience.” — Elizabeth Robinson, author of On Ghosts
“In her thinking and in her telling, Rachel Moritz sets the reader on a pilgrimage, moving out of both shared and individual history and out of belief. The landmarks of politics and family and understanding are refracted and reframed in her thinking and in her telling. If you hold onto your breath, you’ll find yourself in a place of new meaning. That world is filled with song…” — G.E. Patterson, author of To and From
“The borrowed wave is a wave of nostalgia. Whose? From whom is it borrowed? To whom lent? What’s that hiding word-spirit behind the wind in the curtains? What else is going on while the girl observes her family and surroundings, and what of those half-hid intuitions does she make her own? All of them and then some.” — Maria Damon, author of pleasureTEXTpossession
“Book of memory, of metaphysics, of intimacy and of sex, book of selfhood and place, Borrowed Wave travels from childhood landscapes into adulthood’s uncertain territory, each of its poems “visceral as/becoming is.” Syntax is the protagonist of these poems, a singular intelligence singing its way through the vicissitudes of coming to know itself in body and in thought.” — Brian Teare, author of Companion Grasses
Watch:
SELCO librarian Rachel Gray reviews Borrowed Wave by Rachel Moritz.
The evening features a Preface Reception with complimentary passed wine and cash bar, author meet-and-greet, book sales and signing; the Awards Ceremony with live music, celebrity presenters, artisan cheese plates and breads, complimentary wine and lemonade, with emcee Stephanie Curtis of MPR; and the Epilogue After-Party with complimentary champagne, sumptuous desserts, and additional live music. Tickets now on sale, or click here for more information.
Today’s winner: Don Martin. (We’ll be in touch via email, and arrange getting the book to you!)
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