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Home>>Poetry>>Guest Poets>>Daniel Brown

Daniel Brown

Picture
In retaining his baptismal name, the American poet Daniel Brown is being either commendably guileless or very canny. There is always the chance that some bookshop browsers will buy his excellent slim volume Taking the Occasion under the impression that he wrote The Da Vinci Code. But, no, few prospective buyers browse in that part of the bookshop. If they did however, they couldn’t do better than to pick up his little book and start reading. In the era when the English poets first discovered that pure reason could be a sensual thrill, always the most concentrated version of metaphysical poetry was written by George Herbert, because he took spiritual solace in transmitting the complex pleasure of being able to argue closely: the progress of the argument was the spine of the story in poem after poem. Daniel Brown does the latest version of that, with all the cultural references to modern society present and correct, but held together by the argument, which provides the poem’s motor. The effect, in any given poem, is of reading an especially acute paragraph by an analytical philosopher, yet uncannily it incorporates the common properties of everyday life, including a refreshing attitude to the necessary disasters of sex and love. (The attitude is refreshing because so often amusing. Think of the number of times you never cracked a smile at Sylvia Plath.) Ten short poems are given here. There are longer poems in the same book, including “Love Story”, an autobiographical poem about being taught music theory which makes you want to go back in time and tell Raymond Carver to lighten up: no short story has an excuse for being less ebullient than this, unless it tells you more. To put a complex case briefly, this poet, while far less copious than most other poets of his generation, gets much further because he can keep thinking while he laughs, and vice versa. Daniel Brown lectures on music at Cornell and Dartmouth, and lives in New York. Taking the Occasion is published by Ivan R. Dee in Chicago, and I recommend it with a whole heart as one of the few modern books of poetry that has twice as much in it every time you read it, instead of half.

On Being Asked by Our Receptionist If I Liked the Flowers

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“What flowers?” I said. “These flowers,” she said, 
Gesturing leftward with her head, 
And there it was: a vase of flowers 
That hadn’t graced that fort of hers 
The day before. Did I say a vase? 
All of an urn is what it was: 
Capacious home to a bursting sun 
Of thirty lilies if to one. 
A splendor I’d have seen for sure, 
If less employed in seeing her.

​As Seen at the Uffizi

Picture
An audience of shepherds 
Looks on adoringly 
As Mary gently bounces 
The babe upon her knee. 
To Mary’s side stands Joseph. 
He isn’t looking on. 
To judge from his expression 
He’s wishing he were gone
Well up into the mountains 
That rim the little town 
To dwell amongst the shepherds 
Till things have settled down.

Dream after Dream

Picture
All those major league imaginings. … 
Given the hours I devoted to them, 
It’s not improper, in the scheme of things, 
To take half a minute to review them. 
The steal, the diving catch (to talk about 
Kinetic heaven), the going to my right 
To glove and wheel and gun the runner out, 
The joy of being borne (against the sight
Of thousands of fedoras in the air) 
Upon the grateful shoulders of a team 
(The Dodgers) from the field (Ebbets) where 
I’ve cleared the wall with one. … Dream after dream –
The lot (to state, as now I’m able to, 
A truth as patent as a truth can get) 
With as good a chance of ever coming true 
As certain dreams from earlier. A set
Of fantasies that ran along the lines 
Of throwing cars around (thereby waylaying 
Many a creep with criminal designs), 
Flying planelessly (at times betraying
A light residuum of Super-youth 
By veering from my route to pierce a cloud), 
Trading cape for tie in a telephone booth, 
Stepping from it and melting into the crowd.

​At Ease

Picture
It’s only a theory, and only a theory’s what 
It’ll probably remain, but were I ever 
To get involved with somebody a lot 
Taller than me, her being so would deliver 
The two of us from the tension that attends 
On the woman’s being only a little taller. 
No point in my attempting to make amends 
For so great a differential (after all, her 
Chin is at the level of my pate) 
By some technique – say, straightening up – or other; 
A futile effort she’d reciprocate 
By slouching? Wearing flats? Why even bother? 
What is there for a pair so disparate 
In something but to be at ease with it?

Among the Better Blessings

Picture
Among the better blessings there’s 
The blessedness of knowing 
That vision, skin, body, brain 
Have all started going. 
For how it is with death is how 
It is with anything: 
Easier to accept when it’s 
Already happening.

​Beshadowed

Picture
Why this one landing out of the hundreds I’d 
Survived was being shown on the overhead
TV in the plane, who knew? Enough that it was 
(As captured by a camera in the nose 
It must have been, given the screen’s presenting 
A dead-on view of what we were descending 
Toward). Enough to savor this surprise 
Sight of things as from the pilot’s eyes: 
Of the drome as a whole (though it was only dusk 
The field’s lights already a luciplex) 
And a strip that as we neared looked more and more 
Like our destination in particular. 
The one most memorable element 
Was a plane preceding us in its descent. 
Not to say I wasn’t seeing rather – 
The dusk does funny things – my aged mother 
Returning to earth (or so it struck a son, 
Himself beshadowed, following her down).

Epitaph for Deconstruction

Picture
A puff of wind that really shouldn’t 
Have blown so many so far astray – 
And yet not anyone who wouldn’t 
Have come to nothing anyway.

The Way It Is

Picture
I’m not the most observant guy 
To say the least. If I tell you I 
Could pass a boulder in the hall 
Secure in my habitual 
Oblivion, you needn’t doubt it. 
Although to be fair to myself about it, 
A nipple-hint in a blouse or dress 
Is a little thing I’ve yet to miss.

​So Large

Picture
Big world when I was very young. 
The shopping aisles a mile long … 
Our lawn, though anything but wide, 
Unfolding like the countryside … 
The sky! So large and far away … 
Exactly as it is today. ​

​Deliverance

Picture
When I think about how 
We deal with our mortality 
I think about a sense in which it’s like we 
Deal with an injury. 

About how, on first 
Comprehending the ultimate 
Hurt, we harrow it more nights than not: 
This at the behest of that

Cave-old, even 
Ocean-old imperative 
To reckon at its maximally grave 
Any injury we have.

How, years having passed, 
We find ourselves assessing it 
Far less frequently, and more by rote 
Than necessity: our purpose not
​
To sound the wound so much as 
To remind ourselves it’s still there. 
How one day we’re suddenly aware 
Of its no longer being there.
Copyright © 2019
​Built & managed  By Dawn Mancer
  • Home
    • Archive
  • Author
    • Profiles >
      • The Texture of Reality
  • Books
    • The Fire Of Joy
    • Unreliable Memoirs
    • Falling Towards England
    • May Week Was In June
    • North Face of Soho
    • The Blaze of Obscurity
    • Latest Readings
    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
    • Flying Visits
  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Fin de Fiesta
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk