I Love Artists

Drawing on four decades of work and including new poems published here for the first time, this selection of Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s poetry displays the extraordinary luminosity characteristic of her style—its delicate, meticulous observation, great scenic imagination, and unusual degree of comfort with states of indetermination, contingency, and flux.

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing and lives in New Mexico. She is the author of nine volumes of poetry, including Nest, The Four Year Old Girl, and Empathy.

from Summits Move with the Tide (1974)

    Aegean
    Perpetual Motion

from Random Possession (1979)

    Chronicle
    The Reservoir
    from The Field for Blue Corn
    The Constellation Quilt
    
from The Heat Bird (1983)

    The Heat Bird
    
from Empathy (1989)

    Tan Tien
    Chinese Space
    Texas
    Recitative
    Alakanak Break-Up
    Fog
    Empathy
    The Swan
    Forms of Politeness
    from Honeymoon

from Sphericity (1993)

    Ideal
    
from Endocrinology (1997)

    Endocrinology
    
from Four Year Old Girl (1998)

    Irises
    Daughter
    Health
    The Four Year Old Girl
    The Doll
    Kali
    
from Nest (2003)

    Permanent Home
    Dressing Up Our Pets
    I Love Morning
    Kisses from the Moon
    Nest
    Hearing
    Audience
    Safety
    Safety
    Safety

New Poems

    I Love Artists
    Concordance
    Parallel Lines
    Red Quiet

Acknowledgment