Daniel Brown
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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.
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On Being Asked by Our Receptionist If I Liked the Flowers
“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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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
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).
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
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.
Have blown so many so far astray –
And yet not anyone who wouldn’t
Have come to nothing anyway.
The Way It Is
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.