Evil is not personified – the masked painting – the human flesh of face behind a human depth of pain
Explain it to me with numbers – the number blue – the knot on the hemp colored sixteen – a gash as red as seven and twelve.
Visualize it as if you were air – a stinginess in a lack of oxygen – the poison breath of monoxides – a layering of carbon bricks – the thick scent of mustard on sulfur.
Why is it you cannot understand any of this? – the spit in the eye – the lurch of the hand – the half-naked man ordering me to sic my dog on her, the one he loves holding his first born three-month-old gently in her arms.
| Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
Please, other readers, any other readers, help me here. Maik Strosahl? Eric Meub? Bob Boldt? Roger Owens? Ed Rogers? motomynd? Ralph Earle?
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of help are you requesting, Morris? I suspect that any paraphrase of “All Over the Place: Evil Is Not Personified” by Michael H. Brownstein, or any attempt to “explain” it—even if that were possible, even if one could accurately read the mind of the author—would merely substitute the strong poetic statement with something watered down, a prose after-image of greatly reduced voltage. May I share my sense of how this poem might be approached?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, this is what some critics might call a “difficult” poem, as distinct from a “subtle” poem. (This might be a poem that is both difficult and subtle, but let’s start with difficult.) Difficult poems, to my understanding of the term, present a challenge to understanding that can, with patience and effort, be overcome—in whole or in part—by the reader. To cite a famous example, Ezra Pound created difficult poems. Part of overcoming the difficulty of his poetry lies in reading, say, his Pisan Cantos not with the expectation of a linear and rational progression of thoughts, but rather as facets of illumination, or dots of color, that gradually form a whole. His poems are based on what he called the ideogramic method, a system of extended intellectual metaphors. Without at least an awareness that such a system is at work in his poetry, the poems are, for most initial readers, incomprehensible. This is all a gross simplification, of course, but the point is that, once the system is revealed, the effects of the poem have a greater chance of impacting the reader.
On the other hand, we have “subtle” poems. An author of subtle poems could be Elizabeth Bishop. Here the challenge isn’t so much a different paradigm of reading, but levels of artistic awareness. It is possible to read and enjoy a Bishop poem without having any idea that there are additional emotional reverberations above and beyond the immediate presentation. I myself am often at a loss to register these subtleties, which accounts for my steady diet of literary criticism. I love having such things explained, and, hopefully, my ability to discern such subtleties for myself increases. But, unlike the difficult poems, the challenge cannot be as easily resolved by approaching the poem differently. The challenge lies in the gradual education of the reader. (Difficulty and subtlety: these are probably the two main reasons my sister Susan says she “doesn’t do” poetry. It is sometimes a lot of work, but reader’s experience can be so profound.)
There are poetic masterpieces, of course, that may be neither difficult nor subtle: some of Frost’s poetry might be of this type. And there are poems that are both difficult and subtle: John Ashbery comes to mind. But since the mastery of subtle poetry takes longer than that of difficult poetry, I suggest we approach “All Over the Place: Evil Is Not Personified” as a difficult poem. That means approaching it from a different perspective than we might approach a more obviously didactic or narrative or confessional poem.
(Eric comments, continued)
ReplyDeleteOften, a poem that requires a unique or unconventional method of absorption provides the reader with clues. We have quite a few clues in this poem. The punctuation is one such clue. Brownstein relies mainly on the dash—the extended hyphen—to separate his phrases and to structure the “images” of the poem. Emily Dickenson famously relied on such a punctuation technique. We know her poetry to have a strong interior focus. The dash provides a way, in some of her poems, to attempt to replicate the rapidity of the mind or the emotions: thought piled on thought, conclusions chasing conclusions. I’m not saying that the same interiority applies here, but the rejection of conventional punctuation warns us not to read what is here presented as typical sentences.
The form of “All Over the Place” is another such clue. There are four prose-stanzas, for lack of a better term. Unless Brownstein is intentionally writing against form, each stanza may therefore be read as encompassing a distinct facet of thought, not necessarily cumulative or even sequential, but sufficiently structured for us to have a sense of order. Each of these stanzas contain vivid images. Not all of them are visual. Indeed, the “poison breath,” the “stinginess in a lack or oxygen,” and “spit in the eye” bring the non-visual sensory experience to front stage. If we look, in particular, at the last image in each stanza, we find four powerful images that can pretty easily be linked around a theme or landscape. I will not name it, for my naming it is not your naming it.
One way I “read” this poem is to let the images of each stanza co-locate in my mind’s eye, to let them overlap, like a multiple exposure. Instead of trying to explain to myself what “the knot on the hemp colored sixteen” is doing in the poem, or what it even means, I let whatever vague image these words convey rest on top of the closing image of the stanza: “a gash as red as seven and twelve.” If I can pause with these overlapping images and be open to the imagery they present without having to intellectually “understand” each reference, I experience emotions. I expect these emotions are what the poem is aiming to produce.
But look how many words I have used to try to explain how one may read this poem, and then compare it to the explosive brevity of the poem itself. The poem itself is really the best possible clue to the poem. Thank you Mr. Brownstein!
And thank you, Mr. Meub, for this graduate seminar in reading a poem! I knew I was right to include you in my address of poets.
DeleteTo me it seems like he is saying evil does not makes sense. When someone tries to make sense of something senseless, it is the same as “the number blue”. How else can you explain an evil persons actions?
ReplyDeleteSorry if I oversimplified in my comment. I hadn’t seen Eric’s response before mine. Appreciate the depth of thought he went to in his answer.
ReplyDeleteMy reading this morning: Evil is not “personified” because an evil person also suffers pain, his evilness is a malady, an affliction, not his “true nature.” Anyone and everyone can manifest its touch, without ever becoming a personification of it. Even Hitler, Stalin, Ted Bundy…?
ReplyDeleteMy comment wouldn't be possible without having read Eric's posts, and thanks Eric, now I know how you can do what you do-you understand the rules (such as they are) far better than I. I too read the poem in four parts, each a facet of the inexplicability of man's capability for evil. "Visualize it as if you were air -"; evil is a pollutant, a toxin, a noxiuosness we might breathe in at any time. Eric's description of Pound's work describes a pointilist painting in the form of words, each dot of color adding to the whole yet not in a "rational" way. This is a profound technique Michael has used to perfection, and the only way I can begin to understand this excellent piece. Thank you Michael for holding up a lamp to the darkness!
ReplyDeleteWow! When I wrote this piece, I never suspected the depth of thought and contemplation others reading it would feel, learn from it, experience, take away from their reading. I am thrilled by the critical responses this poem has garnered and the compliments.
ReplyDeleteMy reading this morning: The second stanza seems an allusion to a children’s coloring book, as though a parent might explain evil to a child! Even parents can’t understand evil, not even the poet, whose fourth stanza asks why? Michael, have you detected any hints of an answer in these comments? Evil a sickness, a lack, a forgetting of love and connection?
ReplyDeleteA rurther thought on my morning walk: The second stanza's childhood allusion reminded me of the way some children will taunt other children, saying things like, “ ’fraidy cat, ’fraidy cat,” which I suspect is a projection of the taunting child's own being afraid, as though evil's first emanations arise from our weakness, our frailty. The taunted child who is not cowed shows strength, potential goodness, possibly the ability to forgive.
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