Branding Girls
Covert Art by Jen Landis
Finalist for the 2009 Cervena Barva Press Poetry Chapbook Contest
Branding Girls amuses, alarms, and ultimately affirms in its eloquent confrontation of female stereotypes. – Weave Magazine
Praise for Branding Girls
Branding Bond
Laura Madeline Wiseman’s brave new book, Branding Girls, offers us a mercurial and unflinching exploration of the commodification of the body, reduced to a vessel of projections, to a commercial brand, naturally, but also wearing the brand, the wound of the animal possessed. And with possession comes the animation, the childlike doll-play, the habitation by foreign spirits. Part of the power and pathos of these investigations lies in their restraint and tonal complexity, the asbestos of their wit, the intelligence of detail that illuminates even as it mystifies the closeness with which objectification haunts the desiring imagination. A rare thing. This book will widen the gaze that reads it. – Bruce Bond
Branding Dubrow
Brand: as in a mark. Branded: as in burned on an animal, a criminal, someone enslaved. Branding: as in a trademarking, a commodification. In Laura Madeline Wiseman’s terrifying Branding Girls , the poet demonstrates that our femininity is defined by advertising, name brands, and material desires. From the figure of the Japanese “elevator girls,” we learn that contemporary women are in danger of becoming a series of negations: ‘Not geisha. Not madams… / Not call girls / or masseuses. Not school girls / in pleated skirts.’ I love this collection for the same reasons I love TV’s “Mad Men”: its elegance, its dark humor, and its pain. – Jehanne Dubrow
Related Links
- Interview Poemeleon
- Review in Weave
- Interview The Ground Floor
Sample Poems