Further Thoughts on Bradfield

While looking at Bradfield's own explanation of her work provides reiteration of ideas well documented in Approaching Ice, her own ideas of the weirdness and, I might argue, the fluctuating motion of identity. In her interview with Persea she makes the point that, "the poems are a conversation between fact and interpretation." This statement goes a long way to describe the nature of Ice, constantly blending source material with personal reflection.

In this way she goes on to describe the desire to seek out contemporary issues and ideas from this juxtaposition, "how our ideas of sexuality, gender, race, environmental responsibility would set against [the explorer's] motivations." Indeed her point has been made, as poems such as, "Polar Explorer Matthew Henson," detail race,

What will he look like frostbit? Son

of the tropics, how will his dark blood

fare?

while others such as, "Against Solitude" discuss the possibility of homosexuality among these explorers,

I'd not thought

how soft a man's hip would be, how curved the flesh above the backs

of his thighs-listen.

Yet as she states, "they were human and therefore linked to my experience of the world," I feel the poignancy of her ties to such human ideas of identity wane through their rigidity, the rigidity of the historical sources themselves. For me the human identity which I see Bradfield viewing as strange or alien in her work, rightly so, becomes alien to the icy nature of the history it so heavily relies upon.

Neverthless, Bradfield's point, "we are strange creatures and the world is richer than we could have ever invented it to be," reflects an accurate manifestation of our existence. The poem I felt most exemplified this feeling was not in Ice but in the poem, "Creation Myth: Periosteum and Self." Here the reference to antlers and identity gave me a greater sense of the human element inherent in self through its more visceral, powerful, personal imagery and form,

Hormonally imbalanced females of all deer species

have been known to grow antlers.

This is what I choose. Periosteum rampant on my brow

and testosterone to activate it at the pedicle.

When Bradfield's poems escape the icy clutches that the historical source material the arctic entails her poems seem to bound forth looking at issues of gender and identity in ways not bound by the tedious reference of dead explorers.