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The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded: Poems
Harrowing poems from a dark corner of American history by the winner of the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry.
Haunted by the voices of those committed to the notorious Virginia State Colony, epicenter of the American eugenics movement in the first half of the twentieth century, this evocative debut marks the emergence of a poet of exceptional poise and compassion, who grew up in the shadow of the Colony itself.
Haunted by the voices of those committed to the notorious Virginia State Colony, epicenter of the American eugenics movement in the first half of the twentieth century, this evocative debut marks the emergence of a poet of exceptional poise and compassion, who grew up in the shadow of the Colony itself.
80 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 139 reviews
May 5, 2018
I am stunned.
Stunned.
I almost can not move, can not think of how I can convince people who love poetry and people who are terrified of poetry to get a copy of this thin, magnificent book in their hands.
Swoon.
Miss Brown, the poet, was in COLLEGE when she wrote this, and she was not only the John and Renee Grisham Fellow at the University of Mississippi, she was the 2016 recipient of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. And, well, she's a published writer in her early 20s.
Mark my words now, this woman will either implode by the age of 30 or become the next Sylvia Plath.
How do you become someone who, at such a young age, had enough courage to toss her ego out of the cabin window, slice the skin off of her abdomen with her own fingernails and break off a rib bone, in order to write with it?
Damn girl. Damn.
This book is almost phosphorescent in its ability to make light where there shouldn't be any.
It's the best collection of modern poetry I've discovered in years.
They did not build
the church
for us.
I overheard one night nurse
talking to another.
They meant it for the staff
as a refuge
from the stench,
the idiot & the insane.
They meant: you will need God
more than ever
in this place.
After all,
we are a whole host of reasons
to stop believing in anything.
I am the worst thing
the reasoned world
has wrought,
an otherwise lovely girl
daily visited by a radical disorder
they say spawns somewhere
quiet and foaming
in the wounded matter
of my body & my brain
. . .
Imagine, you have never been to the ocean
but the ocean is in you,
& sometimes, it roars.
Stunned.
I almost can not move, can not think of how I can convince people who love poetry and people who are terrified of poetry to get a copy of this thin, magnificent book in their hands.
Swoon.
Miss Brown, the poet, was in COLLEGE when she wrote this, and she was not only the John and Renee Grisham Fellow at the University of Mississippi, she was the 2016 recipient of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. And, well, she's a published writer in her early 20s.
Mark my words now, this woman will either implode by the age of 30 or become the next Sylvia Plath.
How do you become someone who, at such a young age, had enough courage to toss her ego out of the cabin window, slice the skin off of her abdomen with her own fingernails and break off a rib bone, in order to write with it?
Damn girl. Damn.
This book is almost phosphorescent in its ability to make light where there shouldn't be any.
It's the best collection of modern poetry I've discovered in years.
They did not build
the church
for us.
I overheard one night nurse
talking to another.
They meant it for the staff
as a refuge
from the stench,
the idiot & the insane.
They meant: you will need God
more than ever
in this place.
After all,
we are a whole host of reasons
to stop believing in anything.
I am the worst thing
the reasoned world
has wrought,
an otherwise lovely girl
daily visited by a radical disorder
they say spawns somewhere
quiet and foaming
in the wounded matter
of my body & my brain
. . .
Imagine, you have never been to the ocean
but the ocean is in you,
& sometimes, it roars.
January 1, 2018
Someone left this in a donation pile at the library and I so did not want to read it, but it had an intriguingly off-putting title, and there is a blurb on the back cover by a favorite poet, Beth Ann Fennelly. The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded was a government institution not far from where Brown lived. It’s now called the Central Virginia Training Center. The author used to drive by it, and recalled how she used to think of it, in the one autobiographical poem in the collection:
I am my own kind of damaged there,
looking out the right-hand window.
Spastic, palsied and off-balance,
I’m taking crooked notes about this place.
Brown has Cerebral Palsy, and wondered what it might have been like for her if she had born fifty years ago. She writes her book from the (fictional) perspective of those institutionalized there, and those who worked there, as if it were set in the thirties, with sections such “In the Field (Winter 1935-1936)” and “In the Infirmary (Summer 1936)” that give the book its somewhat documentary feel. The book documents the forced sterilization of people with disabilities in that place, recalls the Eugenics Movement, and suggests for me Hitler’s campaign to eliminate (among other people) “defectives” such as the people who might have lived at this institution.
And it’s both beautifully rendered and devastatingly sad, with images such as this (and worse):
Most nights, they knot
the bed sheet in my mouth
so I will not bite my tongue.
One of the most powerful poems is from the perspective of a pastor who serves the institution:
Always, they tell you to go
where God calls you.
What they don’t say is that, sometimes,
God will call you to the wilderness,
gesture toward the trees, and then
hang back and wave you on alone.
This is how I wound up granting absolution
to low-grade idiots and the worn-out women
who turn them over in bed at night and,
at dawn, go home to their own families,
try not to think of ghosts
wasting away in this world.
Here’s a poem focusing on The Blindroom, which was the Colony’s term for solitary confinement.
I. Where You Are
There is a single chair, but often one leg is broken
There is a single window, but often it is covered in boards.
There is no power. It is a place to forget what power is:
that a light turns on and off with the flick of a switch,
that your hand can travel that far from your body.
Sometimes, you are in the blindroom alone.
Sometimes, someone follows you in,
puts his hands around your throat.
You can feel the swollen places
in your neck, between the valleys:
forefinger and thumb,
but the thing about the darkness is
it makes things disappear.
As I said, I didn’t want to read this book, but it made me do it. It made me uncomfortable to even think of it, but it urged me on, poem by poem. I have two sons with “special needs,” one with severe autism, so I like the way it gives witness to people like my kids. I read this, facing an uncertain future for them, with some anguish and admiration. It’s a great debut book of poetry about actual painful American history that really moved me. It's Brown's first book, and already an important one.
I am my own kind of damaged there,
looking out the right-hand window.
Spastic, palsied and off-balance,
I’m taking crooked notes about this place.
Brown has Cerebral Palsy, and wondered what it might have been like for her if she had born fifty years ago. She writes her book from the (fictional) perspective of those institutionalized there, and those who worked there, as if it were set in the thirties, with sections such “In the Field (Winter 1935-1936)” and “In the Infirmary (Summer 1936)” that give the book its somewhat documentary feel. The book documents the forced sterilization of people with disabilities in that place, recalls the Eugenics Movement, and suggests for me Hitler’s campaign to eliminate (among other people) “defectives” such as the people who might have lived at this institution.
And it’s both beautifully rendered and devastatingly sad, with images such as this (and worse):
Most nights, they knot
the bed sheet in my mouth
so I will not bite my tongue.
One of the most powerful poems is from the perspective of a pastor who serves the institution:
Always, they tell you to go
where God calls you.
What they don’t say is that, sometimes,
God will call you to the wilderness,
gesture toward the trees, and then
hang back and wave you on alone.
This is how I wound up granting absolution
to low-grade idiots and the worn-out women
who turn them over in bed at night and,
at dawn, go home to their own families,
try not to think of ghosts
wasting away in this world.
Here’s a poem focusing on The Blindroom, which was the Colony’s term for solitary confinement.
I. Where You Are
There is a single chair, but often one leg is broken
There is a single window, but often it is covered in boards.
There is no power. It is a place to forget what power is:
that a light turns on and off with the flick of a switch,
that your hand can travel that far from your body.
Sometimes, you are in the blindroom alone.
Sometimes, someone follows you in,
puts his hands around your throat.
You can feel the swollen places
in your neck, between the valleys:
forefinger and thumb,
but the thing about the darkness is
it makes things disappear.
As I said, I didn’t want to read this book, but it made me do it. It made me uncomfortable to even think of it, but it urged me on, poem by poem. I have two sons with “special needs,” one with severe autism, so I like the way it gives witness to people like my kids. I read this, facing an uncertain future for them, with some anguish and admiration. It’s a great debut book of poetry about actual painful American history that really moved me. It's Brown's first book, and already an important one.
Read
March 14, 2018I am a sucker
For books with titles like this one.
I know this story, too
How Oliver Wendell Holmes, full of privilege,
Wrote that three generations of imbeciles is enough
And sent Carrie Buck here to her fate.
Sterilized has many meanings.
They tell you that it takes ten years of being blind
before your body gives up dreaming about sight.
Sent her here.
For books with titles like this one.
I know this story, too
How Oliver Wendell Holmes, full of privilege,
Wrote that three generations of imbeciles is enough
And sent Carrie Buck here to her fate.
Sterilized has many meanings.
They tell you that it takes ten years of being blind
before your body gives up dreaming about sight.
Sent her here.
May 6, 2020
This poetry collection was focused on the infamous Virginia hospital where patients were subjected to abuse and neglect as well as forces sterilizations through the 1960s. A harrowing situation to be certain, but the poems, often told through the eyes of one of the patients, still didn’t seem to fully portray the terror and frustration many of these patients likely faced.
December 20, 2017
Here in Massachusetts I've walked the grounds of abandoned "hospitals" for people with mental illness and they are creepy alive with ghosts of a sort. Thus, I was naturally attracted to a title like The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded.
The book has a historical basis and was even researched by its young poet, but the characters in the poems are fictional. You'll also be happy to know that the poems are blessedly accessible. For a taste of the poetry, I give you this:
"Grand Mal Seizure" by Molly McCully Brown
There's however it is you call,
& there's whatever it is
you're calling to.
July, I sew
my own dress
from calico & lace.
August, they take it
off me in the Colony,
trade it in
for standard-issue
Virginia cotton.
Not much room
for my body in the
heavy slip; maybe
that's the idea.
For awhile the abandoning
was rare & then it was not
& would never be again.
Imagine you are
an animal in your
own throat.
The dormitory has a pitched
dark roof & a high porch.
We are not allowed outside.
Instead, we go to the window & make
a game of racing dogwood blossoms
knocked down by the wind.
Choose your flower as
it falls & see whose
is the first to hit the clay.
I beat the crippled girl every day
for a week. The trick is to pick
the smaller petals.
Most nights, they knot
the bed sheet in my mouth
so I will not bite my tongue.
Lay out on the pine floor:
rattle your own bones back
to the center of the world.
In the beds, the smell
of kerosene & lye.
The girls wake themselves
one after another:
spasm, whimper, whine.
Outside: cicadas.
In the distance: the bighouse lights.
Another truck comes loud up the road
bearing another girl.
There is whatever it is
you're calling to. There is
however it is you call.
The book has a historical basis and was even researched by its young poet, but the characters in the poems are fictional. You'll also be happy to know that the poems are blessedly accessible. For a taste of the poetry, I give you this:
"Grand Mal Seizure" by Molly McCully Brown
There's however it is you call,
& there's whatever it is
you're calling to.
July, I sew
my own dress
from calico & lace.
August, they take it
off me in the Colony,
trade it in
for standard-issue
Virginia cotton.
Not much room
for my body in the
heavy slip; maybe
that's the idea.
For awhile the abandoning
was rare & then it was not
& would never be again.
Imagine you are
an animal in your
own throat.
The dormitory has a pitched
dark roof & a high porch.
We are not allowed outside.
Instead, we go to the window & make
a game of racing dogwood blossoms
knocked down by the wind.
Choose your flower as
it falls & see whose
is the first to hit the clay.
I beat the crippled girl every day
for a week. The trick is to pick
the smaller petals.
Most nights, they knot
the bed sheet in my mouth
so I will not bite my tongue.
Lay out on the pine floor:
rattle your own bones back
to the center of the world.
In the beds, the smell
of kerosene & lye.
The girls wake themselves
one after another:
spasm, whimper, whine.
Outside: cicadas.
In the distance: the bighouse lights.
Another truck comes loud up the road
bearing another girl.
There is whatever it is
you're calling to. There is
however it is you call.
January 6, 2019
Quite an impressive book that I think I'll need to read again to fully appreciate. The book's gimmick (which I don't mean pejoratively) is that there was a real place in Virginia (and presumably elsewhere, too) where people whom the government deemed as not worthy of reproducing were housed and sterilized -- and it appears to have continued into the 1970s. The author could have been one of those people, although her cerebral palsy is never mentioned. Instead, she imagines the thoughts and experiences of the people there and relates them through poems that seldom come right out and say what's happening but because of the introductory context given, the poems have meaning beyond their actual words. There's richness and power throughout that runs deep but I always felt like an outsider reading the poems, even though I think I was supposed to relate to the people and feelings.
A line I liked after a description of a neglected landscape: "Lord, most of what I love mistakes itself for nothing."
Grade: A-
A line I liked after a description of a neglected landscape: "Lord, most of what I love mistakes itself for nothing."
Grade: A-
March 26, 2017
The characters in these poems are fictional, but are based on the real history of a real institution. Be advised, this history isn't really too distant and it included forced sterilizations.
What adjectives to describe the writing here? Well crafted. Engaging. Haunting. Moving.
What adjectives to describe the writing here? Well crafted. Engaging. Haunting. Moving.
February 17, 2018
This is a slim collection of verse that is nothing short of haunting. The poet slips into the imaginary minds of the inmates of an asylum that operated in Virginia in the early 1900's through 1950. In an attempt to exercise eugenics, the institute actively proceeded to sterilize many male and female inmates. It's strange how our country went from supporting mental institutions and overreaching treatment of the mentally ill to completely ignoring the mentally ill and supporting few mental institutions. I'm not in favor of involuntary sterilization or lobotomies but I wish we could reach a happy medium wherein the mentally ill could be institutionalized and treated as opposed to being part of the homeless or jailed society, or worse: school shooters.
August 28, 2019
This is quite possibly the only book i've ever read that approximates the feelings I have around and toward my body and my place in the world. I don't think I knew before this, but I suspected, that reading a great poet who also has CP would be cathartic. It was, and it was, at times, overwhelming.
Read
January 11, 2019The people I know who were victimized in asylums went through something that isn’t really comparable to much else. This book disturbed me. It felt to me like it reduced the most atrociously dehumanizing experiences in the lives of people I care about into a lens for the author to think about her own life. If it hasn’t happened to you, you can’t imagine what someone goes through when she’s covered in surgical scars indicated nowhere in her medical history, or when he enters a place like the one described using 20 words and comes out using none, or what leads someone to learn inside a toilet is a reliable place to find food and drink, or what drives a man to spend many hours of the day attempting to feel his way around the room for a wall to slam his head into until he loses consciousness.
I don’t know what the asylum survivors I know went through- in part because it surpasses what can be communicated in general, in part because their differences in communication abilities were used to justify their subjugation in the first place, and in part because what was done to them made communication even more complex for them than before.
It’s important to recognize the limits of what can be known about another person’s life. Reasonable people can easily disagree about the appropriate use of imagination when it comes to catastrophic violations of human rights, but personally... I don’t think temporally distant witnesses to this violence do its victims a service by making their trauma about ourselves.
I don’t know what the asylum survivors I know went through- in part because it surpasses what can be communicated in general, in part because their differences in communication abilities were used to justify their subjugation in the first place, and in part because what was done to them made communication even more complex for them than before.
It’s important to recognize the limits of what can be known about another person’s life. Reasonable people can easily disagree about the appropriate use of imagination when it comes to catastrophic violations of human rights, but personally... I don’t think temporally distant witnesses to this violence do its victims a service by making their trauma about ourselves.
December 3, 2018
“I am my own kind of damaged there,
looking out of the right-hand window.
Spastic, palsied and off-balance,
I’m taking crooked notes about this place.
And, by some accident of luck or grace,
some window less than half a century wide,
it is my backyard but not what happened
to my body—“
Heftige gedichten over een ziekenhuis voor mensen met epilepsie in Virginia die in de vorige eeuw in het kader van eugenetica zonder hun instemming gesteriliseerd werden. De auteur heeft zelf cerebrale parese en onderzoekt de lijn tussen haar lichaam en dat van de patiënten een halve eeuw eerder.
Dus eh ja niet erg luchtig, wel erg goed.
looking out of the right-hand window.
Spastic, palsied and off-balance,
I’m taking crooked notes about this place.
And, by some accident of luck or grace,
some window less than half a century wide,
it is my backyard but not what happened
to my body—“
Heftige gedichten over een ziekenhuis voor mensen met epilepsie in Virginia die in de vorige eeuw in het kader van eugenetica zonder hun instemming gesteriliseerd werden. De auteur heeft zelf cerebrale parese en onderzoekt de lijn tussen haar lichaam en dat van de patiënten een halve eeuw eerder.
Dus eh ja niet erg luchtig, wel erg goed.
July 24, 2019
Poetry is new for me. Luckily a GoodReads regular, Julie, suggested that I read this little book of poems. Little in size but huge in scope, feelings and ideas. I took my time. A few a day, a few rereads, a lot of thinking.
Molly McCully Brown herself has cerebral palsy. She imagines what her own life might have been like if she’d been born 50 years earlier. She imagines it with words that paint terrible and sad pictures for us.
I grew up just a few miles from what we called The State Hospital. At some point its official name was The Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center. Large, imposing, secretive brick. My godmother had a baby girl with cerebral palsy in 1962. Her 6th child; the only girl. She died within days. Ms. Brown makes me realize what Beth’s life may have looked like. It’s harrowing, a tragedy.
Have things gotten better? Changed certainly, but better? Eugenics is no longer a routine practice, certainly and we don’t simply institutionalize our children who are different- but I feel we could still do better.
I loved this book. As soon as the poems no longer haunt me I’ll be reading it again.
Molly McCully Brown herself has cerebral palsy. She imagines what her own life might have been like if she’d been born 50 years earlier. She imagines it with words that paint terrible and sad pictures for us.
I grew up just a few miles from what we called The State Hospital. At some point its official name was The Mid-Hudson Psychiatric Center. Large, imposing, secretive brick. My godmother had a baby girl with cerebral palsy in 1962. Her 6th child; the only girl. She died within days. Ms. Brown makes me realize what Beth’s life may have looked like. It’s harrowing, a tragedy.
Have things gotten better? Changed certainly, but better? Eugenics is no longer a routine practice, certainly and we don’t simply institutionalize our children who are different- but I feel we could still do better.
I loved this book. As soon as the poems no longer haunt me I’ll be reading it again.
April 26, 2017
The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded is an amazing book. This is a great example of a poet really getting something right on every level.
I especially appreciated the courage and empathy present in the poems, and how this was accomplished with an outstanding level of poetic maturity. The tone is consistent, the voice(s) clear and resonant. The choices made in the poem selection are deliberate in a way that fits and feels right.
This book was carefully written and edited, and it's obvious a great deal of research and thought went in to each poem, as well as the narrative arc of the book . Everything about it felt right. As I reader, I sincerely appreciate this attention to detail.
Aside from craft elements, I found this book to have a strong emotional impact.
I think this book has changed my life.
It was clear that this was a book that needed to be written, by a writer that deserves to be heard.
Five starts. Recommended Read.
August 17, 2017
Powerful poems that I found myself reading and rereading. Really great volume.
August 27, 2017
Picked this up because of an interview with the poet on fresh air. I don't read books of poetry a lot, but it was EXCELLENT
Read
December 23, 2025I dont know what to rate this. I wanted to like it, and there were parts I did like, particularly The Blind Room: An Execration. But I think where the narrator interacts with other characters, doctors and fellow patients, is where it falls apart for me. It's not this book in particular thats the problem, but im just so sick of characters that remain so passive in these scenarios. like it's a virtue to be treated like an animal without losing control and responding like one. like you're a martyr for holding onto your feelings long enough to turn them into pretty metaphors. like you're the one whose secretly normal and stuck here with these r-slurs. I know I'm projecting, but it's just tiring seeing the same old narratives rehashed.
edit: just wanna clarify that I would not criticize it as harshly if this was a first hand account, but this is an author choosing to portray this atrocity from a very specific type of perspective
edit: just wanna clarify that I would not criticize it as harshly if this was a first hand account, but this is an author choosing to portray this atrocity from a very specific type of perspective
October 3, 2024
One of the most phenomenal collections of poetry I’ve read in a long time. Heartbreaking and important.
I so admire how McCully Brown uses these variations in form to represent different experiences, creating distinct voices for women who were denied having any voice (or rather whose voices—and humanity—were not recognized by the world in which they lived.)
I feel like this is a masterclass in putting together a collection of poems that tell a complete story, render a full experience for the readers. The structure and sequencing, the thoughtful repetition of details and phrases across the book…ugh. Just stunning. (And it’s her first collection!! And was a project she began in her early 20’s!! If you can’t tell, I’m overcome with admiration lol.)
I so admire how McCully Brown uses these variations in form to represent different experiences, creating distinct voices for women who were denied having any voice (or rather whose voices—and humanity—were not recognized by the world in which they lived.)
I feel like this is a masterclass in putting together a collection of poems that tell a complete story, render a full experience for the readers. The structure and sequencing, the thoughtful repetition of details and phrases across the book…ugh. Just stunning. (And it’s her first collection!! And was a project she began in her early 20’s!! If you can’t tell, I’m overcome with admiration lol.)
December 7, 2020
TW: mental health, eugenics, abuse
i need like a break after reading this........IM IN A MESS.
the virginia state colony for the epileptics and feeble minded was a state run instituition for those considered to be "feeble minded" or those with severe mental impairment. the colony opened in 1910 near virginia with the goal of isolating those with mental disabilities and other qualities deemed unfit for reproduction away from society.
the poet writes in the perspective of the people there and imagined how they must have felt/been through in the colony. super tough read, especially knowing the fact that molly mccully also has cerebral palsy irl & to think that she might have written this at a point of view where she could have been one of those people.
one of the best collections i have read :") if youre okay with reading something heavy, i would highly recommend! my favourite is after all (nothing) / after all (everything).
i need like a break after reading this........IM IN A MESS.
the virginia state colony for the epileptics and feeble minded was a state run instituition for those considered to be "feeble minded" or those with severe mental impairment. the colony opened in 1910 near virginia with the goal of isolating those with mental disabilities and other qualities deemed unfit for reproduction away from society.
the poet writes in the perspective of the people there and imagined how they must have felt/been through in the colony. super tough read, especially knowing the fact that molly mccully also has cerebral palsy irl & to think that she might have written this at a point of view where she could have been one of those people.
one of the best collections i have read :") if youre okay with reading something heavy, i would highly recommend! my favourite is after all (nothing) / after all (everything).
May 6, 2019
I was overwhelmed attempting to tackle this collection in one sitting, and honestly, you shouldn't. These poems appropriately portray feelings of abandonment, isolation, violation, condescension, fear, and yet wonder that could have been running through the minds of the Colony's residents. Brown tackles the subject of forced sterilization with a sharpness that brings the aftermath of the procedure into a vivid, uncomfortable picture.
I immediately purchased the book after returning my copy to the library so I can reread.
I immediately purchased the book after returning my copy to the library so I can reread.
January 10, 2023
These poems are really powerful, especially in light of their connection to a historical place and the events that occurred there. I also benefited from the conversation between the author and Terry Gross on Fresh Air.
November 20, 2017
These poems are intense and richly written. They imagine life at the actual institution the collection is named for.
February 3, 2018
thoughts coming shortly
December 28, 2021
Maybe the best book of poetry I read in 2021??
January 28, 2025
Cried 🤍
August 20, 2017
A terrific reimagining of what it might have felt like to be subjected to the eugenics movement in the 1930s. Content is based upon true history-- developmentally delayed and institutionalized women were sterilized without their knowledge in Virginia. This poetry collection is a perfect example of how the humanities can be relevant to current scientific bioethical discussions, such as CRISPR gene editing. Recommend checking out the poem "A Dictionary of Hereditary Defects" to get the best taste of what this collection is about. Highly recommended and thought-provoking.
February 6, 2025
Read for my approaches to lit class!
A very well done collection of connected poems that became even better after dissecting them in class. I can’t lie, I didn’t get a ton out of them on my first read- I tend to not love reading poetry just by myself, it’s much better in a discussional setting. Highly recommend though! Brown deserves much more credit than she’s gotten.
A very well done collection of connected poems that became even better after dissecting them in class. I can’t lie, I didn’t get a ton out of them on my first read- I tend to not love reading poetry just by myself, it’s much better in a discussional setting. Highly recommend though! Brown deserves much more credit than she’s gotten.
April 10, 2017
81/100
These sort of "concept album" poetry collections tend to bug me with their literalism, just as postmodern epic poetry irritates me with its ironic insistence on simulating coherence. Molly McCully Brown is an incredible classical poet, like an old-fashioned songstress or a gothic storytelling. The collection flirts with genre before ditching it, employing literary styles as if they are backwoods from Brown's childhood. These are distinct poems with a clear overarching vision, somber and poignant and weird and inescapably powerful. Grandiose or sullen tendencies waltz delicately around the outskirts, the sublime pleasures of a horror show without the pretentious musings or the exploitative visions. Humanist above all else, imbued with a sense of history, person, place - they are a vision of a person, Molly McCully Brown, as she has never existed, only experienced, transported so fully through all those stomach nerves. fuck i loved this.
These sort of "concept album" poetry collections tend to bug me with their literalism, just as postmodern epic poetry irritates me with its ironic insistence on simulating coherence. Molly McCully Brown is an incredible classical poet, like an old-fashioned songstress or a gothic storytelling. The collection flirts with genre before ditching it, employing literary styles as if they are backwoods from Brown's childhood. These are distinct poems with a clear overarching vision, somber and poignant and weird and inescapably powerful. Grandiose or sullen tendencies waltz delicately around the outskirts, the sublime pleasures of a horror show without the pretentious musings or the exploitative visions. Humanist above all else, imbued with a sense of history, person, place - they are a vision of a person, Molly McCully Brown, as she has never existed, only experienced, transported so fully through all those stomach nerves. fuck i loved this.
August 16, 2017
Brilliant, brilliant poems. Deeply rooted in historical significance and yet felt personally. Beautiful and haunting. Complicated.
March 15, 2017
Gorgeous.
March 15, 2019
As a child, I worried that if those around me lived longer and longer, and that if those I didn’t know remained healthy, then the ghosts I so badly wanted to see would get lonely. Or, as a child, I worried about ghosts. I mention this, here, as I’ve recently read Molly McCully Brown’s The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, a firsthand recreation that doubles origin, and any actual age seems now an exit for distance. These poems, patient and unsparing, do not give voice to, nor take voice from, but instead listen so accurately as to safely carry sound in its ear-shaped cradle from the ruins of its temporary past while opening for touch its unreachable window. Thankful and serious, this narrative drowning, this new air, is an act of rehomed balance and of outside faith. Brown is a caller, a clearer of place, and honors not only the accidental locale, but also the toll such calling takes on the summoned. What a held note. What brutal kindness.
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