Four long poems, set in New Mexico, which accumulate into an intricate narrative.

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was bom in Beijing, China, and now lives in New York City with her husband, the artist Richard Tuttle, and their daughter. Other books include Empathy (Station Hill Press), Sphericity and The Four Year Old Girl (Kelsey St. Press).


"a single long, exquisitely crafted metaphysical poem about the enigmas of love, silence, the physical world, and human error, about the paradoxical spaces between them, about the ways light speaks to shadow. Most of all, it is about how the creative imagination breathes and thrives.... The effect is dazzling."

--Brent Morris, American Poetry Association Newsletter


"A canticle of visually stunning observations ... meaning arrives through sensation, the surprised juxtaposition of moment upon moment."

--Kathleen Fraser, Poetics Journal


"She subverts the subject/object dichotomy, while incorporating the scientific terms which have been used to give it authority. Her poetry functions as a sort of membrane through which experience and observation pass, and are transformed."

--Megan Adams, HOW(ever)


"...the movement, the meaning, and particularly the feelings expressed are the result of the intervals between visions and the aftermath of visions.... The impact of these significant and tragic themes arrives delicately, in shimmers, in circular fashion, and achieves its stunning effect through style and rhythm."

--Jesse Jiraoka, Contact II


"The Heat Bird marks a significant development in B's poetry. What's worth noting first is a shift in language away from scientific words toward simpler ones with no compromise of the intelligence. B. has captured, with considerable brilliance, the emotional and intellectual pull of figurative desire in a landscape.... [Her] gravitation toward abstract conditions is now rooted in the physical reality of her experience ... [and] becomes that much more fantastic, individualized and reliable."

--Kenneth Warren, Gargoyle