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Bell I Wake To a Zone 3 Press Book by Patty Crane

Bell I Wake To

  • Patty Crane
  • Patty Crane

Listen: when a bird hits a window
you can hear god drop to his knees
(did I say his?)
right there on the back porch—
stunned, wings pulled in tight,
the stoked fire of his/her heart flickering down,
the heat it takes to keep a feathered thing aloft
at ten below dissipating, my two hands
forming a world to make up for the one
failing one victim at a time.

A bead of water
hanging from the end of a finger
can be squeezed, as if from a dropper,
and as luck will have it, the bird drinks,
each droplet rolling down the groove
its pulled-back tongue makes, the tongue
f licking forward, beak closing, opening, closing.
I stroke its head with my thumb,
its thumb-sized head, and the bird seems to relax.
It smells like this side of death.

Upstairs the children are asleep,
beside me waits the puzzled dog,
and outside the near-fatal window
birds race from feeder to woods unfazed,
while in my hands, this one I have saved:
how amazing and ordinary its eyes—
so black, round, and now blinking.
And it doesn’t make a sound,
not a god-risen sound.

  • About Patty Crane
  • Patty Crane’s book-length poem, something flown, was winner of the 2017 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award. Her poetry and her translations of Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer have appeared in numerous journals, including Bellevue Literary Review,Verse Daily, West Branch, American Poetry Review, Blackbird, and The New York Times. Bright Scythe, a bilingual volume of her translations, was published by Sarabande Books in 2015. A third generation Cape Cod native, she divides her time between the hill towns of western Massachusetts and the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
  • In Praise of Bell I Wake To
  • “The poems in Bell I Wake To create a sacred space honoring seasons, generations, the body, and every living creature the poet comes across. Patty Crane writes with the kind of attention Simone Weil says is close to prayer, and indeed under her gaze everything is blessedly alive with song and shimmer, present in its leafing out and its leaving. Her supple language can transform a white birch into a mouthful of sunrise and then to the flush on a young girl’s cheek. “My subject is surprise,” the poet says, the kind of surprise that comes from precise seeing, vivid language and the sly humor of one who knows how quickly the ordinary can turn and amaze. This is a beautiful book, a crucial presence in our scattered world.” —Betsy Sholl, author of House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems
  • “The intimate and exquisite exactitude with which Patty Crane meets the natural world is remarkable. Bell I Wake To brims with keen-eyed, tender noticing—bats are “tin origami,” the snake her spade delivers is “a length of slow-moving muscle,” and finches are “singing wanting.” Our pleasure is further deepened by how fluidly outer and inner worlds spill into one another, as when a flower’s blush of color brings back “the flush / of a daughter’s cheeks as she sits in the bath weeping” or “the sudden tree of her / standing beside me.” This book is calibrated to be quietly piercing.” —Ellen Doré Watson, author of pray me stay eager
  • “From the opening lines of this stunning collection, I am immediately and irrevocably invested in what this speaker has to say, the many worlds and wounds and healings she weaves through bright, immediate, richly developed image, lexicon, and description. Trenchant emotional truths are flashed, knife-sharp, amidst keen insight and compassionate seeing the world around and within the speaker, from the “[r]osettes blooming in the milky water” of the bath where the speaker cares for her wounded daughter to the young stranger boy who sits on the speaker’s lap at a summer concert, fiddling with her bracelet, smelling like grass, where the speaker once again experiences the joy of being both “the keeper and the kept.” The whole of me responds to these poems, the tenderness and unflinching courage wrapped amidst the foliage and wildlife of the speaker’s garden. The spareness in the syntax and line juxtaposed with the poignant storytelling of these poems captures my imagination, as the mothering/daughtering strength of Bell I Wake To is immense and fills me with light. This speaker’s voice is one I won’t soon forget.” —Jenn Givhan, author of Girl With Death Mask
Bell I Wake To a Zone 3 Press Book by Patty Crane

Bell I Wake To

  • Patty Crane
  • 14.00
  • Poetry
  • Some Kind of Proof

Listen: when a bird hits a window
you can hear god drop to his knees
(did I say his?)
right there on the back porch—
stunned, wings pulled in tight,
the stoked fire of his/her heart flickering down,
the heat it takes to keep a feathered thing aloft
at ten below dissipating, my two hands
forming a world to make up for the one
failing one victim at a time.

A bead of water
hanging from the end of a finger
can be squeezed, as if from a dropper,
and as luck will have it, the bird drinks,
each droplet rolling down the groove
its pulled-back tongue makes, the tongue
f licking forward, beak closing, opening, closing.
I stroke its head with my thumb,
its thumb-sized head, and the bird seems to relax.
It smells like this side of death.

Upstairs the children are asleep,
beside me waits the puzzled dog,
and outside the near-fatal window
birds race from feeder to woods unfazed,
while in my hands, this one I have saved:
how amazing and ordinary its eyes—
so black, round, and now blinking.
And it doesn’t make a sound,
not a god-risen sound.

Bell I Wake To

  • Patty Crane
  • 14.00
  • Poetry
Bell I Wake To a Zone 3 Press Book by Patty Crane
  • Some Kind of Proof

Listen: when a bird hits a window
you can hear god drop to his knees
(did I say his?)
right there on the back porch—
stunned, wings pulled in tight,
the stoked fire of his/her heart flickering down,
the heat it takes to keep a feathered thing aloft
at ten below dissipating, my two hands
forming a world to make up for the one
failing one victim at a time.

A bead of water
hanging from the end of a finger
can be squeezed, as if from a dropper,
and as luck will have it, the bird drinks,
each droplet rolling down the groove
its pulled-back tongue makes, the tongue
f licking forward, beak closing, opening, closing.
I stroke its head with my thumb,
its thumb-sized head, and the bird seems to relax.
It smells like this side of death.

Upstairs the children are asleep,
beside me waits the puzzled dog,
and outside the near-fatal window
birds race from feeder to woods unfazed,
while in my hands, this one I have saved:
how amazing and ordinary its eyes—
so black, round, and now blinking.
And it doesn’t make a sound,
not a god-risen sound.

  • About Patty Crane
  • Patty Crane’s book-length poem, something flown, was winner of the 2017 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award. Her poetry and her translations of Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer have appeared in numerous journals, including Bellevue Literary Review,Verse Daily, West Branch, American Poetry Review, Blackbird, and The New York Times. Bright Scythe, a bilingual volume of her translations, was published by Sarabande Books in 2015. A third generation Cape Cod native, she divides her time between the hill towns of western Massachusetts and the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
  • In Praise of Bell I Wake To
  • “The poems in Bell I Wake To create a sacred space honoring seasons, generations, the body, and every living creature the poet comes across. Patty Crane writes with the kind of attention Simone Weil says is close to prayer, and indeed under her gaze everything is blessedly alive with song and shimmer, present in its leafing out and its leaving. Her supple language can transform a white birch into a mouthful of sunrise and then to the flush on a young girl’s cheek. “My subject is surprise,” the poet says, the kind of surprise that comes from precise seeing, vivid language and the sly humor of one who knows how quickly the ordinary can turn and amaze. This is a beautiful book, a crucial presence in our scattered world.” —Betsy Sholl, author of House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems
  • “The intimate and exquisite exactitude with which Patty Crane meets the natural world is remarkable. Bell I Wake To brims with keen-eyed, tender noticing—bats are “tin origami,” the snake her spade delivers is “a length of slow-moving muscle,” and finches are “singing wanting.” Our pleasure is further deepened by how fluidly outer and inner worlds spill into one another, as when a flower’s blush of color brings back “the flush / of a daughter’s cheeks as she sits in the bath weeping” or “the sudden tree of her / standing beside me.” This book is calibrated to be quietly piercing.” —Ellen Doré Watson, author of pray me stay eager
  • “From the opening lines of this stunning collection, I am immediately and irrevocably invested in what this speaker has to say, the many worlds and wounds and healings she weaves through bright, immediate, richly developed image, lexicon, and description. Trenchant emotional truths are flashed, knife-sharp, amidst keen insight and compassionate seeing the world around and within the speaker, from the “[r]osettes blooming in the milky water” of the bath where the speaker cares for her wounded daughter to the young stranger boy who sits on the speaker’s lap at a summer concert, fiddling with her bracelet, smelling like grass, where the speaker once again experiences the joy of being both “the keeper and the kept.” The whole of me responds to these poems, the tenderness and unflinching courage wrapped amidst the foliage and wildlife of the speaker’s garden. The spareness in the syntax and line juxtaposed with the poignant storytelling of these poems captures my imagination, as the mothering/daughtering strength of Bell I Wake To is immense and fills me with light. This speaker’s voice is one I won’t soon forget.” —Jenn Givhan, author of Girl With Death Mask
Austin Peay State University
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