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Monkey Ranch
… a mandrill, a middle-aged woman, a shattered Baghdad neighbourhood, a long marriage, even a spoon, grapple with this unanswerable conundrum—sometimes with rage, or plain persistence, sometimes with the furious joy of a dog who gets to ride with his head through a truck’s passenger window. Julie Bruck’s third book of poetry is a brilliant and unusual blend of pathos and play, of deep seriousness and wildly veering humour. Though Bruck “does not stammer when it's time to speak up,” and “will not blink when it's time to stare directly at the uncomfortable,” as Cornelius Eady says in his blurb for the book, “in Monkey Ranch she celebrates more than she sighs, and she smartly avoids the shallow trap of mere indignation by infusing her lines with bright, nimble turns, the small, yet indelible detail. Bruck sees everything we do; she just seems to see it wiser. Her poems sing and roil with everything complicated and joyous we human monkeys are.”
85 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 14, 2013
You already like this poetry before you open the book to begin reading. The cover of Monkey Ranch, a reproduction of a painting by Donald Roller Wilson showing a monkey smartly tricked out in a dress and wearing a flamboyant polka dot bow on her head, is so charming, so lovable that you're drawn in. A detail from a painting called Cookie...waiting, this monkey fixes you with her candid gaze letting you know it's her promise that what's behind the cover is as wondrous and beautiful as she.
And once you're in you're hooked by Julie Bruck's understanding of the characters she writes about. She begins with a child babbling in her crib at night, ends with a dog's joyous face in the wind outside a truck window. In between are other remarkable interpretations of discovery: a great white shark is released into the ocean, a young girl enters the bedrooms of her brothers away at school to feel that first heavy pressure of sexuality she knows will be with her from that moment on, and another girl understands the tension between her parents as much like the stain of a car exhaust on new snow. Such details load Bruck's poems with authority, helping each to become part of the busy fleet hauling in the various treasures of her vision. With elegant language and quick ideas she dives into a world you've always known but perhaps haven't verbalized yet.
Cookie has been your guide, the barker leading you into the tent. She nods. You see, she says, the world's mysterious but fathomable.
And once you're in you're hooked by Julie Bruck's understanding of the characters she writes about. She begins with a child babbling in her crib at night, ends with a dog's joyous face in the wind outside a truck window. In between are other remarkable interpretations of discovery: a great white shark is released into the ocean, a young girl enters the bedrooms of her brothers away at school to feel that first heavy pressure of sexuality she knows will be with her from that moment on, and another girl understands the tension between her parents as much like the stain of a car exhaust on new snow. Such details load Bruck's poems with authority, helping each to become part of the busy fleet hauling in the various treasures of her vision. With elegant language and quick ideas she dives into a world you've always known but perhaps haven't verbalized yet.
Cookie has been your guide, the barker leading you into the tent. She nods. You see, she says, the world's mysterious but fathomable.
December 19, 2014
What an exquisite collection of poems! I raced through them, now must go back and enjoy more slowly. I wanted to choose a favourite but find that I can't. The poems in which Bruck writes about raising children nearly broke my heart, especially "Girl in the Yellow Cardigan." But so did so many others. Her language is simple and stunning, and she doesn't shy away from the difficult moments in both family life and society at large. Bravo.
October 23, 2012
Please check out my interview with Julie Bruck as we discuss Monkey Ranch and her being nominated for the Governor General's Award in Poetry 2012.
http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.c...
http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.c...
December 5, 2012
Governor General's Award winner for poetry and little wonder - sly and clever, wry and heart-breaking, thoughtful and provocative and a little sublime
January 28, 2022
His paintings were small, suggestions
of houses, pinpricks of green for trees.
She'd set her glass down, say, Paint
like you're blind, from memory and passion -
two words he especially didn't care for.
She'd say, Paint like you're on fire.
But their house was already burning,
and he was going blind and deaf.
So he'd carry the painting back down
to the basement, resume with
his thinnest table brush. He would
never touch her the way she wanted,
though she kept asking him to,
like this, in front of everybody.
* * *
Deep in the seabed,
when the Twin Towers fell,
two enormous tremors
rocked the eels
of Jamaica Bay, Queens.
A small disturbance
under the great water,
quickly settled. Now
they lie like circles
of the earth again,
mating and devouring,
dressed in ritual mud.
* * *
Chicken or shrimp,
sell or keep,
cerulean or indigo,
go, stay?
Duck or goose,
how much,
how soon.
Paper or plastic,
how tight,
how hard?
Closets bulge
with painful shoes.
Rugs stacked so
deep they ripple,
making it hard
for a person
to stand.
The air
palpitates, can't
breathe itself.
The worried air
needs rest.
Chairs
to the ceiling
and nowhere to sit.
The world
drums
its fingers.
of houses, pinpricks of green for trees.
She'd set her glass down, say, Paint
like you're blind, from memory and passion -
two words he especially didn't care for.
She'd say, Paint like you're on fire.
But their house was already burning,
and he was going blind and deaf.
So he'd carry the painting back down
to the basement, resume with
his thinnest table brush. He would
never touch her the way she wanted,
though she kept asking him to,
like this, in front of everybody.
- A Marriage, pg. 32
* * *
Deep in the seabed,
when the Twin Towers fell,
two enormous tremors
rocked the eels
of Jamaica Bay, Queens.
A small disturbance
under the great water,
quickly settled. Now
they lie like circles
of the earth again,
mating and devouring,
dressed in ritual mud.
- Scientists Say, after Neruda, pg. 45
* * *
Chicken or shrimp,
sell or keep,
cerulean or indigo,
go, stay?
Duck or goose,
how much,
how soon.
Paper or plastic,
how tight,
how hard?
Closets bulge
with painful shoes.
Rugs stacked so
deep they ripple,
making it hard
for a person
to stand.
The air
palpitates, can't
breathe itself.
The worried air
needs rest.
Chairs
to the ceiling
and nowhere to sit.
The world
drums
its fingers.
- Indécis, pg. 58
August 2, 2018
Bruck succeeds at holding together the various worries, tensions, and confusions of everyday life—a life where we keep on going through our lives with horror and dear all around us. In my favourite poem, "Live News Feed", the speaker suffers a mundane conversation with her unconcerned father and his girlfriend, while she watches news unfold of a shooting in her mother's neighbourhood.
Read
March 11, 2024Monkey Ranch won the Governor General’s Award; Bruck’s closely seen scenes and images sparkle and incinerate. A favourite standout is “Ocean Ridge.”
September 29, 2015
Meh.
I'm glad that poetry is an art of words and everyone who reads them interprets them differently. Some will like it, and some will not. With this selection, I fall into the latter category sadly. Most of the poems just didn't make any sense to me. I would often feel the flow and then part way through, would begin to get lost and wonder why the ease of the rose stopped.
The was literally one poem in the whole thing that I sort-of liked, Emily Bishop's Room. Even this one I felt it was unfinished. I guess in the end, it didn't really work for me either....
Since poetry is so widely interpreted, I hope my not liking it doesn't deter you if you are interested. You may think the complete opposite to me.
I'm glad that poetry is an art of words and everyone who reads them interprets them differently. Some will like it, and some will not. With this selection, I fall into the latter category sadly. Most of the poems just didn't make any sense to me. I would often feel the flow and then part way through, would begin to get lost and wonder why the ease of the rose stopped.
The was literally one poem in the whole thing that I sort-of liked, Emily Bishop's Room. Even this one I felt it was unfinished. I guess in the end, it didn't really work for me either....
Since poetry is so widely interpreted, I hope my not liking it doesn't deter you if you are interested. You may think the complete opposite to me.
April 4, 2016
Aside from "Snapshot at Uxmal, 1972" and "Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad" not many of the poems here are memorable. The language and images do little to surprise or delight.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews