What a Bicycle Can Carry

Press: B L A Z E V O X [ B O O K S ]
Date:2018
ISBN:978-1-60964-328-7
Purchase Book

Cover Photograph by Adam Wagler
Interior Design & Typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

On a cross-country trek to gather roadside treasures, Laura Madeline Wiseman, set out to do what her dad had taught her: leave a place cleaner than she found it. This is her journey of discovery by bicycle, told through the stories of what we lose, discard, or abandon to the road. Supported by a friend driving a rental car with supplies and maps for this nearly 4,300-mile ride, Wiseman began the search for objects worthy of repurposing. When she found something good, she carried it on her bicycle.

Maybe trash, but better when treasured—ball cap ticker-taped by mowers, clip-on tie swirled with oil, fork in the middle of the road—like her rides beside her dad when she was a kid as he combed the curbs for what seemed obsolete or unusable, Wiseman’s finds are prized. In this continental discovery ride, there are fellow bikers with feisty banter, sweet welcomes at the end of the day’s miles, and rare gifts in what’s saved from the highway when it’s held to the light again. As a teacher who knows the power of the long lesson, Wiseman’s journey for real treasures teaches what can be found on the road when we reexamine what can be carried, held, and pedaled along beside us.

Laura Madeline Wiseman’s What a Bicycle Can Carry shows the beauty that can be made by attending to what’s been disregarded, overlooked, and cast off. Though the structure of the book – a trek across America by bicycle, with sections giving the names of states and poems defined by the day of the trip and the miles covered – may seem straightforward, the book probes a deeper interior journey. One poem, which finds the cyclist-speaker perched briefly at a pull-in in Colorado, trying to catch her breath in the thin mountain air, leaps from the specifics of the journey to bigger questions about identity, asking “Aren’t most things like this – lovely / climbs among others with better kit, wheels/ bodies, class, birth, that privilege of air.” This book examines, with Wiseman’s keen eye for detail and precise turns of phrase, both the tiny particulars of the journey – the bicycle toolkit, discarded scrunchies and other roadside detritus, the rest stops which alternate between luxurious and horrifying – and the broad cultural issues of who belongs in this land and how we occupy it. In a moment when our nation feels divided and strange, Wiseman’s authoritative, sensitive guide provides a bicycle-eye view of a beautiful, complicated country. —Nancy Reddy, author of Acadiana

Praise for What a Bicycle Can Carry

Carry Carter

“What gal wouldn’t set fire to the shoulder/along the road to mark her path, asking, Follow?” Wiseman entreats. As the female speaker journeys across the states on her bicycle, we experience her immediate and meticulous gaze. These poems manifest as a log of both gratitude and chance, and a catalog of questions that beg us to enter adventure as a philosophy rather than a status-building hobby. As natural as the observation of a scavenger, Wiseman can at once search for meaning but without expectation. Her perseverance is calm, her uncertainty tempered, and we are invited to enter this sense of balance ourselves, “Aren’t most things like this—lonely/climbs among others with better kit, wheels,/bodies, class, birth, that privilege of air.” In the solitude of these poems, there is also the bedrock aspiration for connecting through the knowledge and roads that lead us to one another. —Kristi Carter, author of Cosmovore

Carry Brady

One expects this long bicycle ride to be bumpy, the trek strenuous, but this poetic journal is smooth, comforting even. These poems are spare and focused: plucked from the side of the road, captured while bicycling across America. Laura Madeline Wiseman reminds us that “when we search, we search alone,” but her poems show us how to journey – and keep us company. Every thing — a word heard whizzing by, a biting fly, the lost spoon, the novel in her backpack — is a starting point. While the journey is arduous, the poems make us think not of the difficulties but of the journey itself, the passing of days and places and people and milestones. The book has made me think of my own journey: where I am in the landscape, where on this planet, where in time. —Denise Brady, editor & publisher, Gibraltar Editions & Bradypress

Carry Shubert

Part postcard home, part visitors’ guide, part People’s History of the United States, Laura Madeline Wiseman’s poems split open America with an observer’s care. A bicyclist rides the open road with no windshield, and this chronicler pockets lists of lost objects, animals, weathers, geologies, customs, body pains, and the mind’s relentless thoughts. Wiseman has a deft hand with meter, language and word play (Wiseman’s wisdom). Like the unique communications of walkers on the Appalachian Trail, cross-country cyclists connect with tips, routes and safe havens. But for all that, a cyclist is vulnerable and solitary, as noted in “Day 30: Cycling out of the Great Divide/Sweetwater Station, WY to Dubois, WY/100 miles,” a day of soft tar patches, potholes, gravel, growling RVs and semis, Wiseman assesses the sharp drop-off and asks, “What gets left behind—bad/routes or cyclists who lost their grip? What’s waiting?” It’s a compelling metaphor for the measure of our lives. Reading this book, I found myself asking, could I do this? The calendar answered, there is no time. The body answered, there is no time. But to keep pushing forward, remembering to see, that’s the gift of this salient work. —Karen Shubert, author of I Left My Wings on a Chair

Carry Oleson

“The road is empty and there’s so much here.” With its biting flies, granny gears, and a proliferation of mysterious spoons, Laura Madeline Wiseman’s What a Bicycle Can Carry is at turns fiercely melancholic and playful, a generous meditation on the intersection of self and place that stitches one moment/image/sensation to the next. Wiseman’s chronicle of a journey from Virginia to Oregon asks, “what’s a treasure if not found and free,” and shows what it means to strive for one’s best self when nobody’s watching. It's smart, tough, and tender. Truly a gift. —Wendy Oleson, author of Please Find Us

Carry Reddy

Laura Madeline Wiseman’s What a Bicycle Can Carry shows the beauty that can be made by attending to what’s been disregarded, overlooked, and cast off. Though the structure of the book – a trek across America by bicycle, with sections giving the names of states and poems defined by the day of the trip and the miles covered – may seem straightforward, the book probes a deeper interior journey. One poem, which finds the cyclist-speaker perched briefly at a pull-in in Colorado, trying to catch her breath in the thin mountain air, leaps from the specifics of the journey to bigger questions about identity, asking “Aren’t most things like this – lovely / climbs among others with better kit, wheels/ bodies, class, birth, that privilege of air.” This book examines, with Wiseman’s keen eye for detail and precise turns of phrase, both the tiny particulars of the journey – the bicycle toolkit, discarded scrunchies and other roadside detritus, the rest stops which alternate between luxurious and horrifying – and the broad cultural issues of who belongs in this land and how we occupy it. In a moment when our nation feels divided and strange, Wiseman’s authoritative, sensitive guide provides a bicycle-eye view of a beautiful, complicated country. —Nancy Reddy, author of Acadiana