Wendy Brown-Baez's Blog
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May.17.2013
The 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant enabled me to bring writing workshops into twelve non-profit organizations. My passion is to bring poetry that is dynamic, accessible and transformative to audiences who do not usually read poetry. Because studies show that poetry and self...
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Jan.07.2013
How close to madness can you get and not slip off the edge? All my life I wondered if I could go crazy, if the ways my imagination leaped, the fact that I loved booked more than reality, if my need to be the leader, the director, and my equally strong need for silence and contemplation would one...
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Nov.23.2012
How can I eat turkey without remembering Thanksgivings past, the way we went for the border, the need to escape the American style of feasting and the knowledge of his birthday coming around another year? Another reminder that he was, yes, still alive, whether he wanted to be or not. For this was...
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Oct.14.2012
Two years ago my sister passed away from pancreatic cancer and my father took to his bed, bewildered with grief and unable to cope. He had lost a brother when he was in his thirties; two grandchildren: a 2 year old granddaughter in a car accident and my 25 year old son of suicide; his mother and...
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Jul.24.2012
My first poems were written as a teen-ager in the early hours of the morning. I wrote about unrequited love but that wasn’t the only thing on my mind. I also wrote about injustice and the inequity I witnessed. The shacks we passed on our trip through the south to visit my grandmother in...
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Apr.25.2012
I would take my travel drive crammed with poems and manuscripts
I would take my passport so I could get the hell out of Dodge
I would take my grandson’s kisses and the way he told me: I am being a good boy, grandma
I would take sunrises and sunsets and every beach I have ever walked on
and even...
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Mar.30.2012
First of all, I want to tell you that I am approaching feminism from a very personal point of view. My first feminist was my grandmother. She was born at the turn of the century and she was only 16 years old when her mother committed suicide by hanging herself. My grandmother, Mary Wetzel, ...
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Feb.17.2012
I can barely remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. I fell in love with words and books before I started school but the impulse to write words down by myself became urgent as soon as I learned to print, probably in kindergarten. I loved the smell of paper and the feel of a pencil in my...
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Nov.28.2011
What I lost cannot be returned and the grief of that took years to heal.
It took years to unravel the story and to count the cost.
What I lost was the place I called home, refuge, where I could hide form the world and rest or walk naked out of the shower.
A place to invite the...
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Sep.07.2011
As I agonized over what to pack for our trip to Italy, Michael asked me what I most wanted out of the trip, besides meeting his family. “To eat lots of pasta,” I told him. Sight-seeing would be icing on the cake, I mused. I really wanted to just drink wine and eat pasta. I knew...
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Aug.25.2011
She reached up in the repetitive task, clothespin to cloth, cloth next to cloth, clothespin to cloth, down the line. One by one she lined up the shirts, the t-shirts, the ones with collars, then the boxers from prints to blue, then her undies by hue from pink to black. It was their special private...
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Aug.07.2011
I can never regret the leap of faith that brought me here--and all the leaps, the times I didn't know what to do, my head spinning, my mouth dry with fear as I peered over the edge to the bottom below. There was a time when I thought I had crashed, my wings hadn't opened, I had fallen without grace...
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Jun.22.2011
Of course I want to be transported to another world! I want to be absorbed deeper and deeper into the characters, the twists and turns of the plot, to hang on the edge of my seat and keep those pages turning! I have loved mystery novels since I was a young child and on those days when my own inner...
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Jun.03.2011
There are powerful and significant moments in life filled with what is inexpressible, moments of transition, moments of change in our status, our beliefs, our emotions, our circumstances, moments when our ordinary world enters an alternative reality: through love or death, through awareness of...
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Apr.21.2011
I want to remember that I was hungry so that I never forget to say thank you over a meal, an orange, a bag of popcorn, a sliced cucumber, just picked strawberries from the garden, a gift of Christmas cookies.
I want to remember that I was confused and lost and yet I found my way. I learned to ask...
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Here are poems that are living, breathing things; that invite us into them, welcome us into their elegant, ethereal dance, and walk us across the threshold into sanctuary where we look inward, feed the soul's spark, commune with enlightenment, and transform.
--Michael Parker, reviewer for Oranges & Sardines
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—Oranges & Sardines
About Wendy
Wendy Brown-Baez is a writer, teacher, performance poet and installation artist. She is the author of the full length poetry collection Ceremonies of the Spirit (Plain View Press, 2009) and chapbook transparencies of light (Finishing Line Press,...
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