BAR NOSTALGIC – Alex Baker
BAR NOSTALGIC – Alex Baker
Alex Baker gives us ‘Bar Nostalgic,’ a book largely composed of creative nonfiction pieces – told through stories, photographs, and poems. Stylistically, think: what if Clarice Lispector or Claire-Louise Bennett was a friend of yours from college who sent really good mail? Every envelope would contain a torn fragment of an old map or the printed napkin from a cafe in a distant place, a ticket stub or a mysterious receipt, a photo print with one edge burned out or a tape filed with footage you’d forgotten was ever filmed, some verses to ponder, and always an immediate, page turner of a catch-up letter. But really it’s Alex, and she’s written this book. Reading it is like opening that shoebox of mail and looking everything over, enjoying the puzzle, pondering how the pieces fit together, wondering where she is now, when next you’ll see her …
Bar Nostalgic is a collection of poems, stories, essays + film photographs, and stemmed from Alex’s MFA thesis, overseen by Brian Blanchfield, Jess Arndt, and Alexandra Teague.
This title is the first in a new sub series for the press – between: books en route – full length books of creative nonfiction with a strong travel narrative element.
5’’x 8’’. Printed on 60lb recycled off-white paper. 118 pages.
What I Understand of Time is how she roved between.
The barn loft slides open and I dangle my legs over shingles. Fireflies prick the blueberry field below. There’s already
a burgundy finish in the margins, though there shouldn’t be until apples.
It’s gardenias wafting we need. I learned to sort through lettuce in sleds, a trough of bite marks.
If voles, into Seconds; if no one’s looking,
between my lips. Even the field has alcoves.
We flip greenhouses and pull technicolor
chard before spreading crab dust. Here, I protested, and into the evening bundled stems for neighbors and alms. We really did ride the tractor to Bakeman Beach that afternoon to cut seaweed for mulch.
Sunday night Frances said
you should be able to answer your own questions by now. I lag behind the crew.
Dill fronds bend west and I admire how the chevrons follow so close together. Lineage flaps its shutters.
*
There’s no copying the bottleneck sky, broke lightning through tarragon fields.
The chance to correspond in the tall stalks, a row of bolting cilantro you’ll pocket
its flowers, a row you misjudge. You’ll learn
to return to the pile during the storm, collect the coriander,
the white petals and spindles. On the last
evening of July,
brown bag to the surge.
Alex Baker was born and raised in the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. She studied sustainable food systems and writing at NYU and holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Idaho. Her previous book, Glitter, was also published by Two Plum Press (031). She has lived in coastal Maine, Oaxaca and Mexico City, and currently lives in New York City where she works with the Anthology Film Archive and hosts a roving film series.