Heartbeat Geography: New and Selected Poems
AUTHOR
John Brandi
A major collection of Brandi's work, spanning nearly thirty years of travel-- from early poems written in South America to those from India, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, the Arctic, the North American outback, the deep solitude of New Mexico's mountains, and always from the continent of the heart.
Reviews
"Brandi's sandy poem mandalas, crisscrossing back and forth on their own paths, begin to fill out landscapes in depth."
—Gary Snyder
John Brandi (b. Los Angeles, 1943) grew up in California, whose coast, mountains and deserts impacted his early life. After graduating from Cal State Northridge (1965), he worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer with Quechua farmers in the Ecuadorian Andes. In 1971 he moved to New Mexico, where he still resides. A recipient a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, he is an ardent traveler, with dozens of publications issued at home and abroad. Recent books include: The Way to Thorong La (Empty Bowl Press), The Great Unrest (White Pine Press) and Into the Dream Maze, limited-edition haibun poems with hand-colored drawings (Palace Press, Santa Fe). In 2017 he received a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award for A House By Itself: Selected Haiku of Masaoka Shiki (White Pine Press). Brandi has made a living on his craft: teaching, lectures on poetry, haiku and the spirit of travel, and by assisting students in writing programs abroad.