The candlefish, enormous schools of which enter the Pacific Northwest’s rivers in the spring, is so rich with oil that when supplied with a wick it can be used as a candle. Thus creatures of the water become transformed into instruments of fire and spirit, ultimately transcending this world.
Written as the author begins to navigate the second half of life, Candlefish unfolds along multiple lines of narrative and reflection. Each poem is rendered from experience and made incandescent by the spark of the author’s intellect and insight.
Whether tending the flower beds, skinnydipping on her birthday, conversing with a grown daughter, or bringing inside the teacup her husband can no longer carry, Elizabeth Biller Chapman distills each moment to its most vital components and makes them luminous with the necessity and surprise of relation.
Elizabeth Biller Chapman’s candlefish gracefully swim toward the pierced horizon all of us must face and are transformed by imaginative compassion as the book develops, season by season, from summer to spring.
Although born into a literary family—her parents edited and published The Writer magazine and The Writer’s Handbook—Elizabeth Biller Chapman did not write her first poem until she was forty-three. Since then, however, her work has appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Blueline, and Yankee. Her poem “On the Screened Porch” was included in Best American Poetry, 2002. Creekwalker, her 1995 chapbook, won the (M)other Tongue Press international competition, and her debut collection, First Orchard, was published in 1999 by Bellowing Ark Press. She earned her B.A. from Smith College, her M.A. from the Shakespeare Institute, and her Ph.D. from Columbia University; spent seventeen years as a psychotherapist; and has taught at Claremont McKenna, Radcliffe, Scripps, and Smith Colleges.
“If your bookshelves are crowded, it’s time to clean house and make room for Elizabeth Biller Chapman’s Candlefish. Find a place for it between Elizabeth Bishop and Amy Clampitt. You’ll soon discover that these moving poems hold their own in erudite and insightful company.”
—Francis Murphy, professor emeritus of English at Smith College and co-editor of The Norton Anthology of American Literature
“This collection is the expression of exceptional vision, in every sense of the word; the wounded, lovely voice that sings the transient beauty of the world makes these poems unforgettable.”
—Neal Bowers, professor of English at Iowa State University and author of Out of the South, Loose Ends and Words for the Taking: The Hunt for a Plagiarist
“In Candlefish, Elizabeth Biller Chapman invites us to witness the astonishing diversity of plant and animal life that shares our existence, but on its own terms. In palpable, richly textured language, here are poems of love and loss, acute perception and grief, and the pleasure of finding our place in the profusion of the natural world.”
—George Keithley, author of The Starry Messenger and The Donner Party
“In Candlefish, Elizabeth Biller Chapman gives us poems of gently inclusive vision. Closely attentive to the biological details of her adopted California and to intersecting cycles of human, animal and plant life, she explores departures and returns, ruptures and healing, cycles of renewal and moments of grace.”
—Jane Donahue Eberwein, Distinguished Professor of English at Oakland University and author of An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia
