Inventory: Poems

by Dionne Brand

In Dionne Brand’s incantatory, deeply engaged, beautifully crafted long poem, the question is asked, What would an inventory of the tumultuous early years of this new century have to account for? Alert to the upheavals that mark those years, Brand bears powerful witness to the seemingly unending wars, the ascendance of fundamentalisms, the nameless casualties that bloom out from near and distant streets. An inventory in form and substance, Brand’s poem reckons with the revolutionary songs left to fragment, the postmodern cities drowned and blistering, the devastation flickering across TV screens grown rhythmic and predictable. Inventory is an urgent and burning lamentation.

Genres: Poetry, Canada, School, Feminism, Read For School, Womens

106 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2006

About the author

As a young girl growing up in Trinidad, Dionne Brand submitted poems to the newspapers under the pseudonym Xavier Simone, an homage to Nina Simone, whom she would listen to late at night on the radio. Brand moved to Canada when she was 17 to attend the University of Toronto, where she earned a degree in Philosophy and English, a Masters in the Philosophy of Education and pursued PhD studies in Women’s History but left the program to make time for creative writing.

Dionne Brand first came to prominence in Canada as a poet. Her books of poetry include No Language Is Neutral, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Award and thirsty, finalist for the Griffin Prize and winner of the Pat Lowther Award for poetry. Brand is also the author of the acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, which was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award, and At the Full and Change of the Moon. Her works of non-fiction include Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return.

What We All Long For was published to great critical acclaim in 2005. While writing the novel, Brand would find herself gazing out the window of a restaurant in the very Toronto neighbourhood occupied by her characters. “I’d be looking through the window and I’d think this is like the frame of the book, the frame of reality: ‘There they are: a young Asian woman passing by with a young black woman passing by, with a young Italian man passing by,” she says in an interview with The Toronto Star. A recent Vanity Fair article quotes her as saying “I’ve ‘read’ New York and London and Paris. And I thought this city needs to be written like that, too.”

In addition to her literary accomplishments, Brand is Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.

For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/dionne-b...

Reviews

[Naori · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have loved Dionne Brand for years, but I am always unprepared for her. I slip a book of her poetry into my bag thinking I’ll read a few pages and I am quickly reminded that there is no such thing. You cannot just peek into one of her poems while sitting on a bench waiting for a cab, in fact many of them are entire books long. But I’ve come to realize there are authors you read in public and those you save for home, because those, like Brand, will pull out private emotions that spill out everywhere without your control. This book was full of pages like that, and I used to be shy about posting passages of poetry for thoughts that others wouldn’t react the same way, but she writes of the casualties of the world we are trying right now to survive so I feel like that doesn’t really matter. This poem made me think of all of the civilians that have been killed in our political wars; it made me see grace in the figure she describes...

“If they’re numb over there, and all around her,
she’ll gather the nerve endings
spilled on the streets, she’ll count them like rice grains
she’ll keep them for when they’re needed
for music and the ornaments of the air without bombing...
...the daily lists to be made of mundane
matters, like the cost of sugar, or the girl losing
her new pencils again
and not to say, for the memories of the forgetful, the
spinners of silences,
the teethed impasto of broadcasts
she’ll gather the passions of women,
their iron feet, their bitter hair, their
perpetual nuptial assignment
to battered kitchens and rooms
radiant with their blood vessels
their waiting doors
at night in the universe, such waiting
the mind surpasses, the bones are a failure,
the pregnancies wretched again, and again
she’ll store the nerves’ endings in glass
coloured bottles on a tree near the doorsteps,
for divine fierce years to come...”


This is poem is about Katrina:

“It’s August now, the light is deeper,
the sky explosive with rains,
a turning, turning the body of the world
toward a darkness, a sleep, no
sleep would be forgiving

last night, late August,
Katrina’s wet wing flapped, disheveled
against the windows like great damp feathers,
she brushed the alleyways, the storm shutters,
I felt the city she carried away
drowned and stranded New Orleans,
anyway, she was finished,
a ruffed foot, a quilled skirt trailing off

like what billions of rainless universes do we kill
just stepping through air, what failing cultures
submerge under a breath...”

So yes, I hope Dionne doesn’t have to write apocalyptic poems about us now, and we can go on deriving meaning from her reflections on all the things we have already survived.

[jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5 rounded up. Currently reading and analyzing Inventory for my first year English course, and though separately some poems resonate while others remain stanzas and words on paper, the truth is that the novel serves as a continual poem, a war epic. However, instead of celebrating war, Dionne Brand criticizes it, noting the countless deaths and highlighting how western society glorifies violence. All in all, a great poetry read.

[Katie Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I return to my dog earred and well-marked edition of Inventory frequently - too frequently. Everytime I begin to feel overwhelmed and at risk of allowing massive, horrifying, systemic violence become something I am unaffected by, I return to Brand. I returned to Inventory today, hoping to find the strength I needed in light of all that has happened. Once again, I felt so lucky to have been introduced to this work. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to pick it up, to sit with the discomfort of having deaths rattled off as poetry, to feel struggle settle into a sonnet. And, to be reminded that there are lists of good small things that give us reasons to wake up again tomorrow and continue to demand a world that does not glorify violence.

[Marc Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6ogf...

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

-I originally read this book for my uni's English course. It's nice to read current books, especially ones written by authors of colour (who are also Canadian)!

I think we need an updated collection for 2021, with everything going on feels so overwhelming- with the pandemic, climate change, and all the other complicated aspects (the wars, racism) etc.

I liked Brand's take on privilege in American society and how easy it is for us to forget our conscience and go about our normal lives- since we aren't personally affected. It's less of an issue nowadays, but I think there is some importance on focusing on the news and showing empathy. But of course, Brand struggles with grief at focusing on all the bad things in the world. I'm glad at the end there was a hopeful message of all the good feelings in the world. There's the idea that you can experience both- paying attention, keeping yourself accountable, but also finding good things in the world (so you don't burnout).

There were some confusing lines, but I think the book itself was brilliantly written and the concept of an inventory was cool.

[Tawallah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This poetry collection challenges our numbness to tragic deaths in our world. Primarily those in the Middle East, which the news has desensitized us to the fact that people have died. And continue to dead. Ms. Brand also touches on natural disasters, tsunami and famine. It is grim. She quotes music by Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, James Brown and the poet Pablo Neruda.

It is relentless in forcing us to see lives and how entertainment has made us shallow and uncaring. But it offers a few glimpses of hope, kinda. I think I understood the content of this collection but an acclaimed poet. It is a great read but the latter portion was less illuminating personally. In the end, the problem is me. I don’t mind being awaken from my slumber. But I need some hope, too bleak for my tastes.

[Bek (MoonyReadsByStarlight) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, visceral, and a really interesting format.

Parts of this made me feel like I have been rating most poetry I have read too highly because wow! Especially near the beginning of the collection, the ways that the words sounded were so evocative even before I registered what they all meant - on a sonic level.

It is also incredible and depressing how much of this still feels so relevant. Change the names of some technology and a few of the countries/cities and it's today...

[Abbygael · Rating 4 out of 5]

at first i was kinda confused but once i got to part iii i really got into this! this was a sad read but also gave hope within all the bad that was mentioned.

“the physical world is not interested in us, it does what it does, it’s own inventory of time, of light and dark”

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marking time the tick tock of atrocities, making inventories of injustice.

[Lily M ❀ · Rating 3 out of 5]

depresso

[victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars ⭐️

Read for class and I really enjoyed this. My prof was damn right about Dionne Brand and now I need to read more from her. This is the kind of poetry you want to highlight, annotate, and tab to death.

[Tyler Im · Rating 4 out of 5]

"we arrived spectacular, tendering / our own bodies into dreamery, / as meat, as mask, as burden"

"we have to pray for their demise with spiked hands, / with all the brilliant silences, / to understand the whole language, / the whole immaculate language of the ravaged world"

"there are atomic openings in my chest / to hold the wounded"

[Amilcar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dionne Brand's inventory is my current favourite book of poetry. Not only does it capture this loss of belief, or even inability of belief in the mainstream's representation of the dead, but it also reveals the way people revel in death on a social scale.

The list never really ends.

[Mark A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

In brief: this might be my new favourite among Brand's books of poetry. Its vision is vast, its heart capacious, its lines and breaks make terse and urgent music. Inventory churns with anxieties geological in scale, and amidst them somehow also finds still, brilliant waters to sail.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

We believe in nothing

the black-and-white american movies
buried themselves in our chests,
glacial, liquid, acidic as love

the way to Wyoming, the sunset in Cheyenne,
the surreptitious cook fires, the uneasy
sleep of cowboys, the cactus, the tumbleweed,
the blankets,
the homicides of Indians,
lit, dimmed, lit, dimmed

lit in the drawing rooms,
the suicides inside us

and the light turnings too stone,
inside and out,
we arrived spectacular, tendering
our own bodies into dreamery,
as meat, as mask, as burden

- I, pg. 3

* * *

Observed over Miami, the city, an orange slick blister,
the houses, stiff-haired organisms clamped to the earth,
engorged with oil and wheat,
rubber and metals,
the total contents of the brain, the electrical
regions of the atmosphere, water

coming north, reeling, a neurosis of hinged
clouds,
bodies thicken, flesh

out in immodest health,
six boys, fast food on their breath,
luscious paper bags, the perfume of grilled offal,
troughlike cartons of cola,
a gorgon luxury of electronics, backward caps,
bulbous clothing, easy hearts

- II, pg. 15

* * *

One year she sat at the television weeping,
no reason,
the whole time

and the next, and the next

the wars' last and late night witness,
some she concluded are striving on grief
and burnt clothing, bloody rags, bomb-filled shoes

the pitiful domestic blankets
in the hospitals,
the bundles of plump
corpses waiting or embraces by screams,
the leaking chests and ridiculous legs

the abrupt density of life gone out, the
manifold substances of stillness

- III, pg. 21

* * *

At Al Rifai Mosque,
the Shah of Iran lies on an onyx floor

entering the mihrab,
the guard offers to sing so we can hear
the perfect acoustic of the burial chamber,
then cups the most beautiful music
from his throat, the call to prayer,
you would think the onyx would break,
or melt away,
the Shah awake and beg forgiveness
for all the despicable years

bu no,
the guard releases his face
from his hands,
and returns to the commerce of such an exchange,
his sweet voice for baksheesh,
we paid him gladly,
how much would be enough
for the ruin of his life,
singing to the Shah, hourly

we told him he was beautiful,
at least that

- VI, i, pg. 55

* * *

so you find yourself anywhere
selling toys, fake roses, in the Piazza della Scala,
to the privileged, among them
a poet
you find yourself anywhere
reading Neruda, ventriloquist, to the second
millennium, we exhausted so much on useless destruction

always three policemen haunt our piazzas,
interpretazione simultanea, ola preti

it's better, the elliptical roses,
mechanical universes,
some escaped
could share life on the surface

- V, i, pg. 67

* * *

It's August now, the light is deeper,
the sky explosive with rains,
a turning, turning the body of the world
toward a darkness, a sleep, no,
sleep would be forgiving

last night, late August,
Katrina's wet wing flapped, dishevelled
against the windows like great damp feathers,
she brushed the alleyways, the storm shutters,
I felt the city she had carried away,
drowned and stranded New Orleans,
anyway, she was finished,
a ruffed foot, a quilled skirt trailing off

like what billions of rainless universes do we kill
just stepping through air, what failing cultures
submerge under a breath

- VI, pg. 83

* * *

On reading this someone will say
God, is there no happiness then,
of course, tennis matches and soccer games,
and river song and bird song and
wine naturally and some Sundays

and some highways with the relief of water
and wild flowers at the end,
and fresh snapper and wild salmon,
though that all depends on killing something,
and the eagerness of children and their certainty,
look how they try to walk straight

the surface of the earth, how it keeps springing back,
for now, and the irregular weather of hurricanes,
tsunamis, floods, sunlight on any given day,
anywhere, however disastrous at least magnificent

- VII, pg. 89

[S P · Rating 5 out of 5]

3 ‘We believed in nothing
[...]
and the light turnings to stone,
inside and out,
we arrived spectacular, tendering
our own bodies into dreamery,
as meat, as mask, as burden’

11 ‘the whole immaculate language of the ravaged world’

25 ‘still in June,
in their hiatus eight killed by suicide bomb at
bust station, at least eleven killed in Shula at
restaurants, at least fifteen by car bomb, Irbil’
[...]
no need to repeat this really
[...]
the numbers so random,
so shapeless, apart from their shape, their seduction of infinity’

33 ‘she is a woman who is losing the idea
of mathematics,
the maximum is so small, the
crushed spines of vehicles fly in the air,
all September, all October
[...]
now she wishes she could hear
all that noise that poets make about
time and timelessness’

38 ‘Days, moored to the freight of this life,
the ordinances of her brooding hands, the
abacus of her eyelids

thirteen drowned off the coast of Italy,
nine by car bomb in Amarah, twenty by
suicide in Baghdad, child on bicycle by bomb
in Baquba

why does that alliterate on its own, why
does she observe the budding of that consonant

demonstrator shot dead in Samarra,
woman in mortar attack in Mosul,
five poultry dealers shot dead in Yusufiyah

two men and child by car bomb,
TV news director in Sayyidiyya, twenty-one
cockle pickers by drowning at Morecambe Bay’

42 ‘Let us not invoke the natural world,
it’s ravaged like any battlefield, like any tourist
island, like any ocean we care to name,
like oxygen
[...]
we,
there is no “we”
let us separate ourselves now,
though perhaps we can’t still and again
too late for that
nothing but to continue’

50 ‘how is it, how’s the coming hurricane,
it’s passed, the hurricane just came, yawned
and left

we’re here, a bomb went off,
two days ago though, you didn’t hear, no,
a dry run they think, a small device, a lady
got hurt

how is it there, only hysteria,
nothing really, okay then, well

the ripples of resignation there, the lightning
bolts, the salt to take with life
though it was always like this somewhere’

77 ‘your sources are compromised. didn’t you
read my note
[...]
the news is always
exaggerated. Cut it in half, divide it by four,
and subtract it from itself.’

97 ‘the expiration of any breath, its succeeding intake,
the surprised and grateful lungs

you have to measure this also there, the degrees
of the eyelashes, the width of the thumb and forefinger,
going over old newspapers, old clothes, old cans,
the wreckage of other people’s lives
which is your boon,
when a day ends again the body’s exhaustion,
if it comes, that’s success’

100 ‘happiness is not the point really, it’s a marvel,
an accusation in our time,
and so is this, Monday, February 28th, one
hundred and fourteen, Tuesday, August 16th, ninety
Wednesday September 14th, one hundred and eighty-
two, Friday November 18th, eighty
these were only the bloodiest days in one year,
in one place

there are atomic openings in my chest
to hold the wounded,

besides the earth’s own
coiled velocities, its meteoric elegance,
and the year still not ended,
I have nothing soothing to tell you,
that’s not my job,
my job is to revise and revise this bristling list,
hourly’

[Maggie Gould · Rating 4 out of 5]

everyone knows i'm not much of a poetry person. jess mariano said it best: "it's like jeez, get on with it already!" my brain doesn't really work that way in terms of poetry comprehension, work, appeal -- orz doesn't care to work that way. not really sure. but i did greatly enjoy this collection! i had to read it for a canadian lit class, and the work that we put in to understanding and interpreting the passages helped in my comprehension. which i understand is the whole point to poetry, okay?! i just don't usually have the dedication for that work. call me a bad reader, i don't care. anyways!! if you are unlike me and do like poetry, i recommend this collection wholeheartedly, but if you're like me and on the fence, i wouldn't use this review as motivation to go and read it. read it if you like, but if i didn't have to read it for a class, i likely would not have enjoyed as much as i did.

[Alan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nihilistic, poorly written, and boring. Inventory explores the negative impacts of globalization on Western culture in, frankly, unoriginal and unhelpful ways. Through seven poems addressing different issues, Brand tries to show that responsibility for the planet should have come before responsibility for one's own happiness--but that it does not matter anyway since we are all already screwed. The examples she provides to make her point-- that of a woman finding the news cycle unbearable to watch, an exploration of the complete cultural decimation of Native Americans, and an uncomfortable walk through Cairo, among other examples-- are unoriginal and did not resonate with me at all.

The work feels simplistic and does not possess the layered complexity one hopes to find in real literature.

[Vaishnavi Santhirathasan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this book for a university class.

My thoughts on this books were, in a world with violence and horrific breakthroughs of crime. We are responsible to help these issues withdraw. Although the ending suggests that death and vulnerability is inevitable. There is also hope for something more. In the present day as the inventory only grows bigger with bigger overwhelming issues that are arising in this world, we still have time to change.

There are a lot of times I got confused reading this book, I was only clarified of it’s meaning through the lectures and discussions I’ve had with others. Otherwise the overall concept really had a big impact…

[Meg Birch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I re-read "Inventory" this past month, and was once again so grateful to Dionne Brand for her ability to dance language into the dark social problems we're both creating and trying to hard to dismantle.

Constant exposure to watching war & violence is of course very different from constant exposure to direct war & violence, but there's still a numbing effect that happens for a viewer. Brand investigates and feels this deeply, asking us to remember to feel - and feeling deeply, vulnerably, in front of us.

What a powerful writer, and what a worthwhile book.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brand, again, is exceptional in Inventory. How she writes is beyond my full comprehension, and I find it so beautifully crafted. So heart wrenching, so raw, so honest. Although created in 2006; Inventory presents the similar issues and discourses happening today. She begs the question “who’s we?” “has there ever been a we? no.”.

[Pita · Rating 5 out of 5]

A long, vivid, and cuttingly beautiful exploration of North American life and culture at the start of the new millennium, Brand relates with candid urgency how war, globalization, and natural disasters are pummelling us with relentless brutality. A modern epic for our frenzied, fragmented time.

[elifsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

First poetry book! First university book! Kinda hard to understand at times but some of the poems were very effective. The language choice to convey a sense of mourning, guilt, distress, grief, and understanding throughout the poems was very well done.

[YoussefAwadalla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inventory may not be an easy read, both to understand nor to digest, but I think it's a worthwhile read to anyone looking for a wake up call to how the world and its inhabitants treat itself. The themes in inventory are worth analyzing. TLDR: Great read!

[Louis Cabri]

Who is the plural addressee projected by this book? Works for and/or listens to the CBC for literary culture? In that sense a throwback to a former collective constitution of publics as a/the public?

[Isabela Antunes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Astonishing, yet somehow, overwhelming. It hit deeply with its constant modifying syncopation. My reactions to it were pretty visceral. So read with caution (NOT FLUFFY POETRY). You've been warned.

[erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

love the aggressive and unrelenting tone the author used. we cannot nor should we look away from the horrendous things happening. we are all guilty.

[The Darkling's Book GF · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful verbal collection of the many, many acts of violence following the turn of the millenium, as well as a reminder not to abandon hope.

[Manraj Johal]

Powerful final stanza.

[feux d'artifice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I preferred the beginning half over the second half, first part carried a punch.