Questions I Asked My Mother

by Di Brandt

Winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award (League of Canadian Poets).Nominated for the Governor-Generals Award for Poetry and the Dillons Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Di Brandts first book of poetry is a deep, cutting exploration of patriarchy within the Mennonite tradition.You can feel the warmth of the poets breath, sometimes gasping, sometimes singing, always affirming life itself. Read these poems. They will take your breath away.Magdalene Redekop

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published January 16, 1987

About the author

Di Brandt’s poetry titles include questions i asked my mother (1987), Agnes in the sky (1990), Jerusalem, beloved (1995), and most recently, Now You Care (2004). She has received numerous awards for her poetry, including the CAA National Poetry Prize, the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and the Gerald Lampert Award. Di Brandt recently returned to the Manitoba prairies, her home, after a decade away, to take up a Canada Research Chair in Creative Writing at Brandon University.

Reviews

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book remains for me a remarkable act of courage. For a Mennonite woman to write it, to speak "outside of church" as she did in these poems makes the Miriam Toews and the Nikki Reimer and the other women who've lived with this brand of patriarchal, imposed silence possible. In a culture where, in our own post-modern lifetimes, women were savagely silenced and punished for any effort to be SEEN, to be HEARD, this book resists and, I hope, remains read as a crucial member in the CanPo canon.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you

- Leonard Cohen

learning to speak in public to write love poems
for all the world to read meant betraying once &
for all the good Mennonite daughter I tried so
unsuccessfully to become acknowledging in myself
the rebel traitor thief the one who asked too
many questions who argued with the father & with
God who always took thing always went too far
who questioned every thing the one who talked too
often too loud the questionable one shouting
from rooftops what should only be thought guiltily
in secret squandering stealing the family words
the one out of line recognizing finding myself
in exile where i had always been trying as
always to be true whispering in pain the old
words trying to speak the truth as it was given
listening in so many languages & hearing in this one
translating remembering claiming my past
living my inheritance on this black earth among
strangers prodigally making love in a foreign
country writing coming home

- foreword

* * *

look when grampa died last week everybody said he's better off
where he is because he's in heaven now he's with God we should
be happy he's gone home but yesterday when they put him in the
ground the minister said he's going to be there till the last trumpet
raises the quick & the dead for the final judgement now look
mom i can't figure out which is true it's got to be either up or
down i mean what's he gonna do swoop back into his body at the
last moment so he can rise with the trumpet call of what i got to
know mom what do you think my mother is sewing she's
incredibly nimble with her fingers my father marvels at them she's
sewed all our clothes since we were born embroidered designed
them she bites the thread carefully before answering now
Diana she says & then stops i can see my question is too
much for her Dad she calls into the other room come here a
minute & listen to what this girl is asking i have to repeat the
whole thing my voice rising desperately well when grampa
died last week everybody said he's better off where he is because
he's in heaven now he's with God but yesterday when they put
him in the ground the minister said he's going to be there till the
last trumpet raises the quick & the dead for the final judgement &
i can't figure out which is true he's got to be either up or down
what's he gonna do swoop back into his body at the last moment
so he can rise with the trumpet call of what the look at
each other complicity in their eyes i don't think that's a very
nice thing to say about grampa she begins she wouldn't say
this if we were alone it's an introduction she lets him finish
with the big stuff it's your attitude he says i've noticed lately
everything you say has this questioning tone i don't think you're
really interested in grampa or your faith what you really want is to
make trouble for mom & me you've always been like that you're
always trying to figure everything out your own way instead of
submitting quietly to the teachings of the church when are you
going to learn not everything has to make sense your brain is not
the most important thing in the world what counts is your attitude
& your faith your willingness to accept the mystery of God's
ways another time i asked her mom i been thinking about
arithmetic & what i'm wondering is do you think arithmetic was
invented or discovered i mean it seems like it must have been
invented because all these signs numbers & things they didn't find
those lying on a rock somewhere people must have made them
up but on the other hand it really works i mean do you think
anybody could have invented 10 times 10 is a hundred & if so
who could it have been well i just don't know she says
wonderingly i've never really thought about it you sure come up
with the strangest questions really i don't know how you got to be
so smart sometimes i just felt i would burst with all the
unanswered questions inside me i thought of writing the Country
Guide question & answer column but i didn't have stationary &
anyway no one ever asked questions like that i imagined
heaven as a huge schoolroom where all the questions of the
universe were answered once & for all God was the cosmic school
inspector pointing eternally to a chalkboard as big as the sky
just imagine i thought Abraham & Isaac & all those guys they
already know everything they knew about relativity centuries before
Einstein instantly like that they don't ever have to think one
time i asked her about bread i loved smelling the brown yeast
in the huge blue speckled bowl its sweetish ferment watching it
bubble & churn how does it turn into bread i asked her well
the yeast is what makes it rise she said when you add warm water
it grows as you can see yes but how does it turn into bread i
mean it comes out a completely different thing what exactly
happens to it in there in the oven why does heat turn it into
something full of holes we can eat she sighed my mother
sighed a lot when i was around you're asking me something
i can't tell you she said now help me punch down the dough
i sat in front of the oven all afternoon bathed in warm kitchen
smells trying to figure it out someday i said to myself someday
i will find out i will find out everything

- questions i asked my mother, pg. 5-7

[Angela · Rating 1 out of 5]

Years ago, Di taught a couple of my poetry classes in university. She was somewhat a local legend and I bought a few of her books before ever meeting her. I think that enough time has passed that I can be objective about how I feel about her poems (for the record: she is a very sweet, charmingly odd lady...even if I didn't much like the books she selected for her classes. Also, her voice is a lot higher pitched than I expected it to be). Anyways!

I don't like this book at all. Even the cover is hideous. I will commend Brandt for her unique, consistent style, but it's not a style that appeals to me. Her poems are run-on sentences with no punctuation in sight, except for ampersands. Reading them is awkward. The rapid-fire thoughts are overwhelming and at times it's hard to separate sentences from each other—just because she doesn't put a period or comma, the reader can usually figure out where the different clauses are...but that's not supposed to be my job!

The poetry in this book revolves around Di's childhood in a Mennonite community in Manitoba. She writes about life on the farm, family, and belonging—or trying to belong—to a strict religious group. Obviously, Di ended up leaving the Mennonites at some point in her life, but her poems about her childhood show the seeds of her apostasy. Like when she writes about her mother's fancy jewelry that can only be worn in private. Or when she got lost on a field trip and went an art gallery instead of a museum and saw paintings of nude women. Or asking her mother how her grandfather can be in heaven if Judgement Day hasn't come. Many of her poems are strangely erotic...or at least, they try to be? There are a lot of poems about lovers, including Jesus (!) None of these subjects sparked my interest, and Di's annoying style made them worse. I feel like there's a lack of variety in this collection. I'll end with an excerpt so you can judge for yourself:

i imagined
heaven as a huge schoolroom where all the questions of the
universe were answered once & for all God was the cosmic school
inspector pointing eternally to a chalkboard as big as the sky
just imagine i thought Abraham & Isaac& all those guys they
already know everything they knew about relativity centuries before
Einstein instantly like that they don't ever have to think    one
time i asked her about bread     i loved smelling the brown yeast
in the huge blue speckled bowl its sweetish ferment watching it
bubble & churn how does it turn into bread i asked her

(p. 6, from "questions i asked my mother").

Poems that I liked:
"paraphernalia for a love scene," "mother why didn't you tell me this," "trying to climb to you here."

=3/41 (7.3%) poems that I liked.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really want to like this poet. I find the themes of her life and her poetry are fascinating. However i just find it so hard to like the poems as a whole. there are lines that I like, images that are so beautiful and important ideas but there is something about the style of the poetry that does not sing for me.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of Di Brandt's early books and I did read it before, but now re-read it again. I like her insights into the Mennonite community she came from. Her work is insightful, honest, and compact.

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good but not great