Böcker av Betsy Bernfeld

Who the H is Henry David Tarantula?That's what George P. Stone, Mayor of William, Arizona, wants to know. Particularly since he is the mayor's opponent in the upcoming election.Henry David Tarantula lives in a cave above the town of William. He has assumed the unusual name as he portrays himself as the Henry David Thoreau of the Southwest. His desert residency is modeled after Thoreau's famous stay at Walden Pond. In his political campaign, Henry David stands for water preservation, and he rails against air conditioning and exotic pollen.Mayor Stone's version of Walden is a Waldon construction tractor. He promotes progress in the form of watermelon farming, and he promises to clean the caves of their free-loading inhabitants and rampant beer cans, which he avidly recycles.The political campaign is all so philosophical until Henry David meets Virginia Stone, the mayor's daughter. She is stalking him with a flower-intensive science project. The three-way power struggle is joined by an endangered wolf from Chihuahua, Mexico. The desert blooms, beer cans roll, and animals dream in this humorous environmental love story.

The Cathedral Is Burning, Betsy Orient Bernfeld's full-length poetry collection, is a lamentation for the loss of Mothers, Grandmothers and Mother Earth. The poems are illustrated with art and photos. From the burning of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris to the demise of Central American migrants in the Arizona desert, the poetry bounds through fire, drought, demolition and rebirth, viewed through the solace of stained glass. Bernfeld's work was supported through the 2020 Wyoming Arts Councils Creative Writing Fellowship for Poetry.