When we’re gone from this Earth, what will we leave behind? What will we pass down to those who come after us?

Plastic. If nothing else, lots of plastic. A plastic bag might take 20 years to break down, but harder, thicker plastics, like toothbrushes, might take 500 years or more to break down.

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Elizabeth Bradfield is a poet and naturalist who sees first hand, in her work as a marine educator, the ravaging impacts of plastic on marine life. But she also confronts plastic and our collective addiction to it as a subject of poetry.

Her poem, “Plastic: A Personal History,” is what she calls a “cranky naturalist” poem, which is pretty funny, but embedded in the humor are big questions: how has plastic become part of who we are as individuals and as a species? Now that we know the dangers and devastating effects of plastic production and disposal, how must we change our relationship to this petrochemical product? What kind of world are we making, and what alternatives do we have?

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of five collections of poetry, including, most recently, Toward Antarctica. She co-edited the newly-released anthology, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, and Orion, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at Brandeis University and is founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press. She lives on Cape Cod, where she also works as a naturalist and marine educator.

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This episode of Chrysalis is part of the Chrysalis Poets series. You can listen on Ghost, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.

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Elizabeth Bradfield

Born in Tacoma, Washington, Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Toward Antarctica, which uses haibun and her photographs to query the work of guiding tourists in Antarctica, and Theorem, a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro.

Bradfield is also co-editor of the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, and Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, 2005-2020.

A professor and co-director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University, Bradfield has received a great deal of recognition through awards and fellowships. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, Orion, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship.

Based on Cape Cod, Liz also works as a naturalist, adding an engaging and proactive component to back up the prowess of her evocative literature. She also is the founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided Press, a journal and grass-roots initiative that, through monthly publications, aims to expose the broader community (beyond academia) to relevant literature and art.

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“Plastic: A Personal History”

By Elizabeth Bradfield

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

How can I find a way to praise

it? Do the early inventors & embracers

churn with regret? I don’t think my parents

—born in the swing toward ubiquity—chew

& chew & chew on plastic. But of course they

do. Bits in water, food-flesh, air.

And their parents? I remember Dad

mocking his mother’s drawer of saved

rubber bands and his father-in-law’s red,

corroded jerry can, patched and patched,

never replaced for new, for never-

rusting.

Cash or plastic? Plastic. Even

for gum. We hate the $5 minimum.

Bills paperless, automatic, almost

unreal.

My toys were plastic, castle

and circus train and yo-yo. Did my lunches

ever get wrapped in waxed paper or

was it all Saran, Saran, Saran?

Sarah’s mom

was given, in Girl Scouts, a blue sheet

of plastic to cut, sew, and trim with white piping

into pouches for camping. Sarah has it still,

brittle but useful. Merit badge for waterproofing.

For everlasting.

You, too, must have heard stories,

now quaint as carriages, of first plastic, pre-plastic.

Eras of glass, waxed cloth, and tin.

Of shared syringes.

All our grocery bags, growing up,

were paper. Bottom hefted on forearm, top

crunched into grab. We used them

to line the kitchen garbage pail.

Not that long

ago, maybe a decade, I made purses for my sisters

out of putty-colored, red-lettered plastic Safeway

bags. I’d snag a stack each time I went, then fold

and sew, quilt with bright thread, line with thrift store

blouses. They were sturdy and beautiful. Rainproof

and light. Clever. So clever.

I regret them.

And the plastic toothpicks, folders, shoes that seemed

so cheap, so easy, so use-again and thus

less wasteful, then. What did we do before

to-go lids? Things must have just spilled

and spilled.

Do you know

what I mean? I mean, what pearl forms

around a grain of plastic in an oyster?

Is it as beautiful? Would you wear it?

Would you buy it for your daughter

so she in turn could pass it down and

pass it down and pass it down?

Elizabeth Bradfield's Website