Other New Favorite Poet/Artisit: Jen Bervin

Jen Bervin is the other new poetry faculty member at VCFA, and gosh, I wish you all could meet her. She is one of the most inspiring people I have met. She radiates creativity, wisdom, and just kindness. Her background is in visual arts, so she does all sorts of amazing work with textiles and other materials, and she's combined her love and talent in the visual arts with the art of poetry. Her reading of her new book, The Silver Book, was phenomenal. She put me, and the rest of the audience, I assume, in a trance of some sort. Check out her website: Jen Bervin. And she lives in Brooklyn and does readings, so if you're in that area, it'd be worth your time to check her out. She's also a big time Emily Dickinson scholar, so I'll leave you with a poem from that great poet:

I felt a funeral in my brain,
 And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
 That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
 A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
 My mind was going numb

And then I heard them lift a box,
 And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
 Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
 And being, but an ear,
And I and Silence some strange Race
 Wrecked, solitary, here.