Books

Stein & the Faraday Cage

CHAPBOOK 2023

In her poem A Million Versions of Nothing, Markie Babbott writes If Stein were my mother, she might take my foot in her lap… Or, she might grab Babbott by the hand and join her in chanting these incantatory poems, poems that give voice to the beauty and catastrophe of the Anthropocene. In language that seeks to upend the furniture, Babbott explores forces seen and unseen, metaphorical cages that protect and confine, as she reckons with ordinary chaos and extraordinary moments of grace. She gives the reader one account of the unraveling…hardly accurate, yet thoroughly true. You will be spellbound; Babbott’s probing intelligence coupled with her radiant sense of play make her an irresistible guide, and whether she’s pondering mortality, examining the end of a marriage, or discovering fire, her vision will alter yours.

~Suzanne Simmons, In September They Draw Down the Lake

Markie Babbott opens Stein & The Faraday Cage with a dare: Tell me what I am/ and I will tell you what I am not— a boldness she sustains, poem by stunning poem. Babbott invites the reader to listen in on the conversation she’s having with Gertrude Stein, in which she riffs on and responds to the often odd obliqueness found in Stein’s “Tender Buttons” with a lyric grounded in the deeply felt, the personal, giving voice to what it means to be embodied and on intimate terms with the world. There’s a reverence for life in all its multiple forms—be it human, tree frog, or pine, in this wholly original collection of poems. We are reminded of the entwined states of beauty and fragility and consoled: If you have lost your memory/the songbirds will sing it.

~Maya Janson, On the Mercy Me Planet, Murmur & Crush

Markie Babbott’s Stein & the Faraday Cage embraces life with all its messy contradictions, what Keats called negative capability—her work, a true gift to the reader during these fraught times. The poems, both intimate and wise, are masterfully woven together, sometimes less with sense than with sound, and in this way, call to Stein, but with a particular emotional heft that is clearly Babbott’s own, infused with an intense regard for the other, a desire, almost a promise to give each person, scene, tree or leaf the particular unknowability they are due.

~Sally Bliumis-Dunn, ECHOLOCATION

With deepest gratitude to TAMRA CARRAHER, Curator/Editor of Alexandria Quarterly Press

Alexandria Quarterly is, like the tag line says, a curated portfolio of art and literature. It is the hope of the editor that Alexandria‘s pages are filled with praise, worship, disgust, argument, resolve; that each issue acts as a healing art, a question without an answer, a celebration of unanswered questions and a good long thought shared among friends–all of whom believe that there is magic in our stories, our photographs, our paintings, our music.

http://www.alexandriaquarterlymag.com/about

Beginning Moon, (Broadsided Press, 2015)

Into the Great Swamp
By Edward Babbott & Markie Babbott
2015
Description:
Within New Jersey’s Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, a father and daughter explore the seasons of life through an exchange of photography and poetry. They respond to Rachel Carson’s invitation (plea) to see ecological complexities anew as if for the first time, as if for the last time. In this time of climate change, Ed and Markie’s sense of interconnectedness with the natural world is expressed through harmony of subtle image and lyric.