A DNA surprise in 2018 resulted in a group of poems written as I processed the news of a biological father (different from the dad who raised me), and four “new” brothers. I offer the poems in Grafted Tree to honor the complexity of family and the diverse ways family connections have manifested in my life.
REVIEWS OF GRAFTED TREE:
Review by Jan Tramontano
Judith Prest’s luminous book about families opens quite simply: Wherever I go/I bring a crowd along. Grafted Tree follows the treasure map of her rich experience in only the way this gifted poet can do. The reader takes us on a journey with her through the well-remembered stories of her life and newly unveiled secrets she has recently discovered. Exploring family history can be a treacherous undertaking —I am hiding secrets and weapons in there. This poem is an IED…One light touch and the whole thing will fly to piece, scatter of passed down memory. But if explored with the insight and command of language as is evident here, it is a gift to us all.
The poems uncover her life as revelations layer one atop another. The poems about her son are rich as she describes him coming into her life: If the water were clear enough, I would wash away the stink of fear, the sludge of despair. Here I wait at the portal to my own land; Here where I bring my newly adopted son… and thereafter as he grows up.
Written by a poet at her peak, Grafted Tree above all will resonate as a love letter to all kinds of family experience, written with understanding, compassion, and truth. As she writes in the book’s concluding poem, “I carry their history; /it has shaped mine/ My breath, my spirit/a bridge where/ they stand now/They wave to me/through the mist.
Jan Marin Tramontano, poet and novelist, author of The Me I Was With You.
REVIEWS OF GRAFTED TREE:
Review by Christine Graf
The poet Judith Prest shares the journey of her complex lineage, its
branches and offshoots in the book, Grafted Tree. There is
surprise and mystery as we observe that tree which grows new roots
and matures. We come upon Judith’s bloodline and parentage, share her
longing for answers about her ancestry while her mother, who carried
“a knot in her heart” is front and center in the beginning of this story.
Judith walks with the “family crowd” as she calls it, which includes Aunt Carrie,
the bipolar vaudeville star, Uncle Theo the sea captain, and her great grandpa
who drinks away his weekly wages. The denouement in these deft and colorful
poems is the discovery of who her real father was. Learning this so late in life,
the poet shares the gentle father who taught her the boy scout motto,
be prepared. Yet she couldn’t prepare for what she uncovered about her
biological father.
There are many favorite poems here, and one of them is titled, Wardrobe Alchemy,
a tribute to Judith’s mother. She describes her lovingly wearing a dress of
“dandelion yellow with a bodice dotted in black, her skirt sways from hips to calves.”
Judith uses the “S” sounds throughout this lively poem like a song, as in the
soft hush of brushes on drums. She admires her mother’s desire to disobey the
rules and writes, “ In her yellow and black dress she’ll stride across borders, over the edge of her known world, breaking trail for me.”
The true genesis of her family reveals itself in the poem, Guadalajara 1989: Falling In Love. This is the pinnacle when Judith and her husband Alan adopt a baby boy
from Mexico. Judith talks of the complications of adoption and immigration and the moment baby Jon is placed in her arms. A new branch being added to the grafted family tree, a new foundation. This book of poems shares the story we can universally connect to and today this tree is in full bloom, rooted in the music of poetry.
Christine Graf, Poet, Mixed Media Artist, Editor and Writing Coach
~ Judith Prest