When she was just a girl, Kim Bridgford wrote a detailed story about the adventures of a doll passed from one family to the next. Her mother was impressed with the intricacy of the tale, but a little chagrined when she reached the ending: old and worn the doll is one day left in the trash, only to be burned.

Though her mother suggested she look into more upbeat subject matter, Dr. Bridgford today is still exploring the tristesse of the past and loss. Those themes figure prominently in her new book of poetry, "Instead of Maps: Poems by Kim Bridgford" (David Robert Books, 2005).

"It seems that those ideas still preoccupy me," said Dr. Bridgford, a professor of English at Fairfield University, whose first poetry book, "Undone," was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. But while Dr. Bridgford examines melancholy in "Instead of Maps," she does not wallow in grief. One poem, "What If," offers consolation to those who would change a moment in their past to avoid a painful occurrence, by asserting: "We never think we could have made it worse."

The book, which includes poetry Dr. Bridgford completed over the span of about four years, opens with a series of poems about, primarily, poets. Dr. Bridgford offers homage to many of the greats, including Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, and reveals an intricate look at some of their idiosyncrasies.

"It was very satisfying for me to do some research on poets I've always loved," Dr. Bridgford said, adding that all of the poems pay tribute in one way or another. One of the poems is about a former friend and student in a writers' camp, aspiring artist Jamie Alaine Hulley, who died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 20.

"'Instead of Maps' fulfills the promise of its title, exploring lives not according to pre-existing coordinates but those in which a 'star, /Some nights, is all you have.' Kim Bridgford speaks of, and with, the courage that is won from near-despair and clothes her sinewy lines with a gracefulness that reveals their stately contours," writes poet Fred Chappell.

Dr. Bridgford drew on some of her own experiences for some of the poems. "Lies" was written following a cancer scare in which doctors had found a lump that turned out to be benign. "Some poems come out of thinking about the 'what ifs,'" Dr. Bridgford said.

The book also features a "sonnet magistrale," a series of sonnets that repeat the last line of each preceding poem as the first line in the following poem. The final sonnet repeats all of the repeated lines. The complicated structure is a departure from her earlier free verse work. However, after a former student experimented with writing sonnet "crowns," Dr. Bridgford tried them and has since increasingly moved into writing her poetry in traditional structured forms. Every summer she attends the West Chester Poetry Conference in West Chester, Pa. on traditional forms of poetry and has recently presented some of her work there.

"I really wanted to make poetry harder for myself and to do something that was technically very difficult," she said of structured writing. "I feel that I'm challenged by writing in form and that I can see more easily in my own work when a line is off. You really have to work to say what you want."

Dr. Bridgford received her bachelor's degree and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1981. She went on to earn an A.M. and then a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois in 1985 and 1988, respectively. Dr. Bridgford's works have appeared in more than three hundred publications, including: The Georgia Review, The Quarterly, The Iowa Review, The Hollins Critic and The Formalist.

"Eden's Gift," a fine letterpress book of her poems will soon be released by Aralia Press and Dr. Bridgford is already at work on her next compilation: a series of poems inspired by stories in The Guinness Book of World Records. The project was set in motion by her son, who showed her the Guinness Book and shared the account of the woman with the longest fingernails in the world. In each poem in the series, Dr. Bridgford considers one record-holder, from the person who can tie the most cherry stems with the human tongue to the one who can cut the most champagne bottles while preserving the contents.

Dr. Bridgford will hold a reading of selections from "Instead of Maps" at 7 p.m. on August 19 as part of the Word of Mouth Reading Series at the Arts and Literature Laboratory, 5 Edwards Street, New Haven. "I think poetry is about being in a community and bringing people together."

"What If" by Kim Bridgford

What if, we say, we'd left the moment there -
The way we might a sweater on a chair -
And with one extra morning cup, the car
That sent our lives careening was not far
But somewhere up the road? What if the choice
Could just be redirected by a voice,
A bird's insistent warning that could change
The one event that we would rearrange?

We play our what-ifs over every day
As if in doing so we'd find a way
To make our moments easier to live.
Why don't we think of the alternative?
Convinced that we could, somehow, lift our curse,
We never think we could have made it worse.

"How" by Kim Bridgford

How sometimes what should be said isn't said.
How words elude the touch of hands in bed.
How a friend we haven't seen we hear is dead.
How we are left with nothingness instead.

How sometimes just the sky fills us with need;
How birds and snow know quiet as they fly;
How we just feel this, gathering inside.

How we say we'll keep in touch, but mostly lie.

How sometimes when time passes we will see
The way our parents, and their parents too,
Unravel in our skin and memory.
How children echo us as we pass through.

How feeling makes us think that others know
How much they've meant to us. And it's not so.

Posted On: 07-05-2005 10:07 AM

Volume: 37 Number: 294