“Marcielle, you are the Salvador Dali of poetry!”
– Jesse Collins, Jesse Collins Jazz Band
The Breathing House is available at Amazon.com and at all Borders Bookstores.
“Marcielle Brandler’s keystone is the verb. She uses it like few others, gives even the most ordinary poetic content dramatic motion. Even the nouns and adjectives get ‘verbed’ through her precise magic. The result is a book which is full of movement, aptness, and genuine affirmations of life.” – Jack Hirschman
Marcielle writes a unique and sensual poetry that is born in the dark and emerges into the light with an erotic intensity. Her poetry
obviously comes out of very real personal experiences that have been
moldering for many years. She has a great ability to bring her reader
along with her. -- LIONEL ROLFE, Writer/Editor California Classics Books
“Marcielle is a poet’s poet.” – Robert Firmage, poet
“The best pieces [in the CD Disclosur:e: Voices of Women] are those that make their revelations vivid rather than weigh them down with portent. Marcielle Brandler’s ‘The Civilian the Siege’ works a war metaphor into a passionate portrayal of lovemaking.”
– Evelyn McDonnell, LA Weekly, “Music Reviews” Section: Nov. 20, 1992.
Marcielle Brandler obtained her Master’s Degree in poetry in 1994. Her poems have been translated into Czech, French, Arabic, and Spanish, and have been published in several countries. In 1994 and ’95, she helped organize and host International PEN’s (Poets, Essayists, and Novelists) Celebration of Banned Books at the Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa Monica, CA. Marcielle was a judge in the 2001& the 2005 Poetry Competitions at Los Angeles City College. Ms. Brandler organizes poetry/ musical events for charitable organizations and donates all proceeds. She teaches college English and has been staff writer for local papers and she helped organize an Artists Expo for April 2003 at Cal State University Northridge. She is former Board member of the Alameda Writers’ Group, and produces a public access television program, Marcielle Presents! with Adelphia Televison. Ms. Brandler appears in Who’s Who of American Women 2003-2004 and in Who’s Who in the World, 2005. Her website is: http://www.webspawner.com/users/marcielle/
Excerpt
Eden
I startled my mother in the blazing
hallway, her breasts an exotic gift
my lips had never suckled. It was
an accident we met. Never before
had I beheld anyone naked. My sisters
told me of the times they had watched
her. I imagine my mother lifting
herself from the forgiving floral suds
of her bath. This secret time I had
never visualized until now. She glides
on her hose, attaching them with
little posy snaps, and perfumes
herself in her personal
scent. Slithering into her
strapless cocktail dress, her
shoulders glowing, she fluffs up
her hair like a delicate fern,
then entwines the glittering
necklace and presses on the blossom
lipstick which my father will kiss
from her mouth before they
lie down in the room where only they
may sleep. What are these angry wings
barring me from her garden? I remember
the last time she bathed me. I was
five and embarrassed. I turned away,
and she left me in my
unscented water.
Prague
And the drift
Of the sing
In cobblestone colors
Pierce my heart
The love-city
The city-bridge
The bridge of cities
Binding the artists
To their places
Palettes spinning o’re
The heads of schoolchildren
Their uniforms crisp
And windy. Cafes packed
With Americans, with
Germans. Post
Office workers refuse
To help you. You must
Learn more Czech.
Where are the writers?
Tourists celebrate dead
Artists. The prostitute in
Wensleslaw Square dances
For the poorest gypsy
I ever saw. No cats.
No dogs. Just swarms
Of people touring, studying,
Snapping cameras.
Snapping bits of memory
From pieces of Prague
To hustle home.
Black Stage
Someone has called
the red leaves home.
Scriptures in the sky
are peeling down.
My sisters rake and burn
them with unspoken fires,
while I lounge with my aged
parents on the porch and wait
for the first stars.
My mother has mesmerized us
with their transmissions like
the saga she invented
of why my half-brother was banished
from us when he was only nine,
and why we were forbidden, all our
years, to speak his name. Mother
defines the sparks searing through
Orion. I search the black hole,
the antimatter of her eyes.
My sisters point to the frayed
landscape of our lives
and the evidence above us.
Someone has seen us
gawking. Someone
is pulling it all away.
Robin Ouzman Hislop's poetry is certainly in dialogue with some of the key architects of the 'poetics of indeterminacy' – both the Modernist strands represented by the likes of Beckett and Stein, and the postmodernist strands represented, initially,
A further collection of poems, many from years in the Middle East, but also the California San Francisco and Central Coast areas (Santa Cruz, Carmel, Big Sur, Berkeley, etc.).
