Postcards from Montana - photographs and poems by Brooke Herter James

Montana is no stranger to me.

My husband and I honeymooned
in the Crazy Mountains; we took dozens of camping trips to Yellowstone when our children
were small. We have fished many
of her rivers and hiked many trails. We have family that has settled there. We have begun to put down roots of our own in a small town in the southwestern corner of the
state.

Still, I am from away.

Vermont is a place similar in her rural character and independent spirit. Yet Montana’s landscape is
so vast as to inspire a lexicon of beauty all her own. I write these “postcards” not to claim fluency or belonging, but rather to set down exactly what I see whenever I am fortunate enough to share time
with this broad and wild valley far from home.

This beautiful hard cover gift book contains gorgeous color photos of Montana scenes, along with vivid poems based on the photos. Lowell Jaeger (Montana Poet Laureate 2017-2019) has written as follows: “Postcards from Montana is a woman’s testimonial of love for a place. How to put into words and images that love when the place is so vast, so unfathomable in its beauty? ‘I write these “postcards” not to claim fluency or belonging,’ says poet Brooke Herter James, ‘but rather to set down exactly what I see . . . .’ And what a joy it is to ‘see’ love and place through the camera lens and praiseful language of a spirit attuned to what others might take for granted. These aren’t simply postcards from Montana: these are postcards from the heart. Thank you, Brooke Herter James, for waking me again in the paradise of gratitude.”



	Photo by the author

Brooke Herter James is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Widest Eye (2016) and Spring Took the Long Way Around (2019) and one children’s book, Why Did the Farmer Cross the Road? (2017). Her poems have appeared in PoemTown Vermont, Mountain Troubadour Poetry Journal, Orbis, and Rattle (forthcoming) as well as the online publications Poets Reading the News, New Verse News, Flapper Press, Typishly and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. She was chosen as a finalist in the Poetry Society of Vermont’s 2019 National Poetry Contest. She is a devoted member of the Wednesday Poets, a group of Vermont and New Hampshire writers who meet weekly to share their work. When Brooke is not writing postcards from Montana, she can be found living on a small farm in Vermont with her husband, four hens, two donkeys and a dog.