DOMINION

by Brooks Haxton

Poems deal with animals, justice, school, childhood, anger, racial intolerance, war, death, memory, fear, music, and nature

107 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 1986

Reviews

[Will Cadle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brooks Haxton was born in Greenville (pronounced by the locals as Greenfull), Mississippi, a place I'm familiar with because I worked at a hotel, once, that was owned by a man from Greenville. It seems Greenville is midway between two large towns and so became a standard stopover for travelers, in particular, sales reps; owning a hotel there proved lucrative. (Or, hell, it could be Greenwood, I'm not sure, but the bias is prevalent for either or both.)

So, I admitted to myself a certain bias when approaching Mr. Haxton's poems, because I really, really despised the owner of that hotel. Deeply. And to be fair, at first that bias seemed properly placed, because the initial poems in this collection struck me as what I find confusing, if not wrong, about today's poetry in that there is nothing "poetic" about the poems.

In fact, they read pretty much like vignettes and nothing more. I recalled, when reading them, a comment made to me by Scott Jackson in which he stated you should be able to read a poem aloud in a bar and not raise an eyebrow.

I'm certain Mr. Jackson's poetry has achieved that bar's level, if that's what he aimed for; but, for myself, I like the poetic elements to be in a poem. It's why I like to read, aloud, W.B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and so many more who incorporate a musicality in their writing; who find a fresh approach to language; whose command of that language is formidable enough that they merit being singled out as poets and not mere dilettantes.

Remove those elements, and you can call it poetry, but you can't really defend it as poetry. By which I mean it's difficult to define what a poem is to an un-scholared reader.

I understand our having moved away from the type of imagery that persisted for so many years; i.e., if one's face is red (from shame, embarrassment, or anger, or a mix thereof, as in William Stafford's poem Traveling Through the Dark), then something should be causing the redness (such as the taillight in said poem). I'm fine with that.

I read a poem the other day from a member on Quora in which the image of the sunlight through a picket fence was described as fingers. I understand. But the sun doesn't have fingers. These poetic elements have been eradicated in the same way that rhyme has; but, please, not meter, too. We need that. That IS poetry. That, and a singular use of verbiage that heightens the language, makes it startlingly fresh...not something you could recite in a bar because it would raise eyebrows (I hope).

I imagine this is akin to why people don't like nonrepresentational art. It's missing the elements they consider to be art. I don't agree, but I do understand their frustration.

Perhaps it's a bias on my part to think that when you remove the poetic elements from a poem, you remove its distinctive qualities; i.e., what makes it a poem. Now, it's simply prose with abbreviated margins.

But, there was a point about midway in Mr. Haxton's collection - a collection, I should add, published by Knopf Borzoi as part of a series "The Knopf Poetry Series" and that's no mean feat to have been selected for that honor - a point when, reading the poem aloud, I found that where he'd started had shifted to a slightly more mature and capable voice, one that did have a measure of music to the words stitched together, held on the page now as if structured and controlled by clef notes rather than a story's need to tell itself.

An example, from "Anatomy," which is a series of poems; this is the first, Hands:

They move against your body for your delight
And leave me to imagine yours for mine.
The joy they feel themselves is incomplete.
Aching under their patchwork of old scars,
Left thumb and forefinger may comb the eyebrows,
Soothing the eyelids shut, and as you breathe
My left palm on the column of your breath lifts.
Under the right your ribcage falls. They feel
What moves us -- heat lightning, quick dark,
Tilt of the night sky soaring into the blood.

From this moment forward, I found the poems more engaging, though the earlier poems had their interest, but it was more the interest in a story unwinding, an anecdote, um, related while sitting in a bar nursing a beer.

I'm certain if one were to ask other poets, those more directly in the field, more connected and more central to the circle of the cognoscenti, they could provide a stronger defense and explain the value of Mr. Haxton's poetry; I admit that bias. It is mine, but it's not the same bias that began this review, that one no longer obtains.

I think readers of poetry will find Brooks Haxton's poetry an engaging read overall.

[Matt]

Poetry