When Aozora “Zoe” Brockman’s first book, “The Happiness of Dirt,” was published in 2011, this is what Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein wrote:
“In an era when most stand sorely distanced from the planting, tending, and harvesting of our food, Zoe Brockman reconnects us to the intimate pleasures and pure labor of growing things. Ms. Brockman conjures the seasons of the earth’s body and of our own flesh, linking them in writing both limpid and lyrical. Doing so, she feeds the soul that feeds the body just as surely as her beloved garlic, sweet potatoes and kale.”
Cover art, Lisa Lofgren, multi-plate etching
Now Brockman has published her second chapbook, “Memory of a Girl.” The book evolved from a month spent in Japan with her Japanese grandmother who is struggling with Alzheimer’s but still holds disconnected memories of growing up in Japan after the atomic bombs were dropped on civilians.
For all of us who have loved and maybe cared for a person approaching death, this is a tender account about loving and cherishing someone we know will soon leave us either to death or to Alzheimer’s ravenous appetite for memory.
Brockman also has written about the discrimination she faced as a young girl in central Illinois, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an American father. Her account makes us ashamed and proud at the same time. It provides hope because we are moving forward with new knowledge of past discrimination and the chance to understand and correct course.
This is a collection of poems by a perceptive young writer who graduated last year from Northwestern University in Evanston and has returned to work on her family’s organic vegetable farm in central Illinois.
Brockman is the recipient of the 2015 Jean Meyer Aloe Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and her creative work has been published in PANK, the Cortland Review, Fifth Wednesday, and other journals.
“Memory of a Girl” is available at selected local stores and through Brockman’s website:
https://aozorabrockman.wordpress.com/memory-of-a-girl/.