Evoking the lyrical precision of Annie Dillard and the exquisite food writing of M.F.K. Fisher, Gabrielle Myers takes us on a Northern California idyll through her 2006 internship at the Tip Top Farm and Produce in Vacaville. Here, the beauty of the land – light streaming through fig branches, carnelian tomatoes exploding in front of rows of sweet peas – is tended by the mysterious frenetic Farmer and her interns, Baker and Chef. Their days are filled with back-breaking farm labor, but their nights are alive with the freshest, most creative meals imaginable. At night, Gabi lies in her yurt pondering her mother’s suicide attempt, working on stories to tell herself to make it all right, while just up the hill another mind, busy as a hive, fights a storm of loss and sorrow that threatens to shatter Eden. And what of these stories do we tell ourselves? Myers asks. Sometimes, they can’t be rewritten.

Hive-Mind

Biographies & Memoirs

Myers, Gabrielle

Professionals & Academics

Lisa Hagan Books

With the lyrical precision of Annie Dillard and the exquisite food writing of M.F.K. Fischer, Gabrielle Myers takes us on a Northern California idyll – an internship at the Tip Top Farm and Produce in Vacaville. Here, the beauty of the land – light streaming through fig branches, carnelian tomatoes exploding in front of rows of sweet peas – is tended by the mysterious frenetic Farmer and her companion, Baker. Together with their intern Gabrielle, the trio tends a landscape full with sustenance and life. Their days are filled with back-breaking farm labor and their nights are alive with the freshest, most creative meals imaginable. At night, Gabi lays in her yurt pondering her mother’s suicide attempt, working on stories to tell herself to make it alright, while just up the hill another mind, busy as a hive, fights a storm of loss and sorrow that threatens to shatter Eden. And what of these stories we tell ourselves? Myers asks. Sometimes, they can’t be rewritten.

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Review\n"Gabrielle Myers does not shy away from a kind of post-mod naturalism, where we can taste things, see things, and even-I dare say-touch their 'opalescent crisp skin.' Although world-stuff and social-stuff shifts and is disassembled in the scenic constructions of her poetics, she manages a lush 21st century personal pointillism. Most lovely, most alluring."-Juan Felipe Herrera, former U.S. Poet Laurate (for the California Writers Exchange contest, Poets and Writers, 2009) 
"Throughout this book, Gabrielle Myers reflects on ecology, environmental injustice, and multi-species relations. She invites us to touch "web threads," smell compost, grip ripe fruit, and see hummingbirds extract "the last pollen from a yielding flower." These poems are like seeds planted in our imaginations, which will root and blossom for many years to come. Reading, then, becomes a profound act of harvest."-Craig Santos Perez, author of Habitat Threshold and from unincorporated territory 
"These poems of deep interiority and lush attention are a pleasure to read. This poet has fully metabolized and mastered many different styles and traditions, from Hopkins to Bukowski to Apollinaire. She writes, "My speech strengthens in a leaf/ Detached from what is real," and her simultaneous detachment from what is merely real along with her deep connection to the natural world leads us further and closer to the essential, unanswerable questions that underly everything."-Matthew Zapruder, author of Father's Day and Why Poetry 
"This is a promising debut volume. Myers has a keen eye for the natural world, and a particular gift for sound, especially the Anglo-Saxon alliterative dimension."-Alan Williamson, author of The Pattern More Complicated: New and Selected Poems (2004), Res Publica (1998), and Love and the Soul (1995) 
"Feast your eyes and ears on the splendor of Gabrielle Myers' collection: Too Many Seeds. A veritable cornucopia of richly textured language and imagery, these poems draw us deep into the fecund, visceral realms of the poet's carefully observed terrain, and prove a tireless tribute to the natural world, places rife with thistle, grass, and vine, with bees and creeks and their "storm-heavy bends", the "cricket chorus" and "chicken slumber", "cabbage moth", the "billions of bulbs" and "subterranean feelers". Clearly, Myers can't have too many seeds because the fruits of her thoughtfully crafted lines defy death as they generously nourish us. In her own words: the growth goes on forever..."-Michelle Bitting, author of Broken Kingdom (Catamaran Books) The Couple Who Fell to Earth (C & R Press), and Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press, 2022)\nToo Many Seeds contains poems that explore food and nourishment in its complex glory as experienced through farm, kitchen, and food factory work as well as more metaphorical ways of feeding the soul. Discover an invisible food economy which many of us are not aware of. From being in the fields on a small farm, to the gassed, sanitized, and inspected world of a dried fruit factory, to kitchen and catering work, Too Many Seeds takes us on a journey with food production, particularly focused on what this means in America. The poems present intimate snapshots and explorations on how food comes to us and carefully considers how we tend to the earth, others we are in community with as well as ourselves, and what that means for our nourishment. Juan Felipe Herrera, former U.S. Poet Laureate, writes: "Gabrielle Myers does not shy away from a kind of post-mod naturalism, where we can taste things, see things, and even - I dare say - touch their 'opalescent crisp skin.' Although world-stuff and social-stuff shifts and is disassembled in the scenic constructions of her poetics, she manages a lush 21st century personal pointillism. Most lovely, most alluring." Poets and Writers: California Writers Exchange Contest.

Too Many Seeds

Self-Help

Death & Grief

Finishing Line Press

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