Andrea L. Hackbarth

@thelostintent.bsky.social

849 Followers 1427 Following

(she/her) writer and editor; piano tech; Minnesotan by birth, Alaskan by choice; mother (of the single sort); general skeptic; burn it all down hybrid prose-poem chapbook, “waveforms: a short course in piano tuning,” available from @harboreditions

Info about the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Alaska Pacific University: Study fiction, literary non-fiction, or poetry; Get one-to-one mentorship throughout the program; Complete in 2 years, 3 months, with 3 summer sessions and 4 mentorship semesters. About the program: The low-residency MFA is a 36-credit program combining individualized study with an on-campus summer residency in Anchorage, Alaska, every July. Pre-residency online instruction begins May 2026. Apply today! Admission requirements: Application & $35 fee; Portfolio; Personal statement; Recommendations. Application deadline: April 1.
Lots of colorful bathroom stall graffiti messages, such as “Fuck Trump w/a HARD DICK” and “FUK ICE keep our Latina mamis.” Oh, and “Death to Amerikkka.”
Northern lights in green, yellow and red shining up over a river bed and mountains, with some white human lights below.
Screen shot of an email stating that Academia.edu’s AI has “turned your research into an easy to understand analogy” and inviting me to “explore impact hub.” Gross.
Close up of grey, deeply furrowed tree bark with tiny red-orange round fungi growing in one crack.
Stupid propaganda from Homeland Security. Close-up picture of the Statue of Liberty’s face with the words “Protect Her” over it and text above saying, “Recapture the America your forefathers created. Prevent foreign infiltration.”
“Three rabbits” painting by Mary Russell Smith, 1969. One black, one brown, one white rabbit, chomping on apples and veggies like good fall harvest, first of the month rabbitses.
A cybertruck pretending to be a real camping vehicle, with a tent on its back end, hanging on for dear life.
Child’s drawing of rainbow stripes on a white background, with three small happy smiling rainbows scattered around. This is the child-wolf you want, but that only shows up in glimpses.
In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa Arching under the night sky inky with black expansiveness, we point to the planets we know, we pin quick wishes on stars. From earth, we read the sky as if it is an unerring book of the universe, expert and evident. Still, there are mysteries below our sky: the whale song, the songbird singing its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree. We are creatures of constant awe, curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow. And it is not darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain, each rivulet, each pulse, each vein. O second moon, we, too, are made of water, of vast and beckoning seas. We, too, are made of wonders, of great and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds, of a need to call out through the dark. "In Praise of Mystery" by Ada Limón Released at the Library of Congress on June 1, 2023, in celebration of the poem's engraving on NASA's Europa Clipper. Copyright Ada Limón, 2023. (Below the photo is unreadable text about “Art in Space” and a photo of a man in a suit looking at a blue globe on a white pedestal.)
A single green tulip leaf, sprouting up through a hole in a dead dried brown leaf on the ground. There’s a big log to the left and a rock to the right. Some grass in the background, lots of brown dirt.
Photo of O’Keefe’s “winter road” in which a creamy white background is interrupted by a thick brown line that curves up from the bottom of the frame to the right and gets thinner as it continues around to the left. Just before the top left corner it curves out to the right again a few inches, then takes a sharp turn back left and up off the canvas. The whole thing gives the illusion of looking up at a pregnant belly with a small breast at the top. It’s gorgeous.
A stack of 25 chapbooks spread out on a wood table, sunlight brightening their top edges.
Screenshot from the Alaska Marine Highway (ferry) website, giving the sad page face with the text "This site can't be reached https://dot.alaska.gov/amhs/index.shtml is unreachable. ERR_ADDRESS_UNREACHABLE"
Yellow box showing a book cover with image of a piano keyboard, a woman’s face in profile, and mountains and trees. With the following text: NOW AVAILABLE waveforms: a short course in piano tuning by Andrea L. Hackbarth The first thing to understand is movement: the instrument's magic is motion and nothing more." so begins Andrea Hackbarth's Waveforms, and from there the reader harmonizes into the various, ranging, beautiful music of this book, which is part philosophical investigation harmony, part familial bewilderment, part detailed explication of a piano-tuner's work. To observe to a poet share the details of an old craft such as piano tuning by one skilled in both it and poetry is a gift beyond measure. What does it mean to listen, to tune? What are the tools used? What drifts through the mind of the tuner as she uses her tines, felt, and rubber? Andrea Hackbarth gives us all this, and more. -Elizabeth Bradfield, author of Toward Antarctica, editor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry
A main intersection of my little town of Palmer, Alaska, totally flooded and impassable.
Grey metal board with magnetic poetry tiles that say “diamond was a gift from mother life yet beauty could crush it” and below, the scattered words “gown language meat”
View out the window through parted curtains, showing a dawn-blue sky, outline of pioneer peak, frosty tree-branches, and one glowing streetlight.
Image from Washington post. Headline: Inside the Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters. Photo of Harris at a podium. Sub-head: A multi-pronged dark money effort by advisers to Elon Musk targeted liberals, Jews, Muslims and Black voters with ads that were not quite what they seemed.
Photo of bright pink and green northern lights.
Screen grab from chapter 6 of The English Understand Wool, which begins, "Maman ordered a Pleyel from Paris because one wishes to play the pianoforte on the instrument preferred by Chopin" and later reads, "Maman bought a riad in the next street and installed a Steinway, which is regrettably necessary for the world of the concert." This last quote, beginning with "installed..." is highlighted.
A virtual certificate with text "Celebrating 10M users on Bluesky, #1,785,950, Andrea ‪@thelostintent.bsky.social‬, joined on Oct 31, 2023"
Graphic showing Eowyn Ivey’s new book, Black Woods Blue Sky, with text that says For every copy pre-ordered at Fireside Books, I will donate $1 to the Palmer Public Library.
Outdoor stage. Cloudy sky. Lots of people. Kids playing. Mountains.
Three Lego mini figs with clothes and features not matching traditional gendered conventions.
Cover of Zong! by M. Nourbese Philip