The Master Letters: Poems

by Lucie Brock-Broido

The title of this richly textured book derives from two of the three mysterious letters left by Emily Dickinson--the ones addressed to "Dear Master." Lucie Brock-Boido has imagined a series of letters echoing devices found in Dickinson's own work. "We feel we are in the presence of something entirely new, " says Bonnie Costello in The Boston Review . "Not even Brock-Broido's wonderful first book, A Hunger , prepares us for this bold encounter."


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Poetry, The United States Of America, Anthropology, American, Contemporary

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Lucie Brock-Broido was the author of four collections of poetry. She has received many honors, including the Witter-Bynner prize of Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, the Harvard-Danforth Award for Distinction in Teaching, the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a Guggenheim fellowship. She was described as an Elliptical Poet by critic Stephen Burt.

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read some of these poems when in my freshman English class and it changed my life. Perhaps it was reading them in tandem with ED's Master Letters, perhaps it was the conversation of poetry and prose at work in these and ED's letters. Regardless, I was Awakened.

I finally purchased this on a whim in order to get free shipping on an Amazon order and goodness, am I glad I did. I have 5 more years of experience in reading and writing poetry and I'm a different person. These poems are not only incredible responses to ED but Brilliant, Burning, Sexy pieces that I want to read aloud to myself, chant to myself, as I go about my Little Life.

Read this.

[Tricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

once again this book is blowing my mind.... every time i read it i am overjoyed with the possibilities of wordsmithery and at the same time awesomely humbled by LBB's craft, imagination and poeticninjaskills. case in point: in the poem "Unholy" there are sultry sea wenches "When I was young I sold slow French kisses as dry goods to sailors--as some girls made madmoney in more genteel ways, I had none of this." indeed, i say! and what's a saltwater poem without a sea captian "He is so less used to handling the religious limbs of women, their finer slender arms, unbaptized clavicles, spleening [...]" indeed, i say. indeed

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
Ahhhhh I just love this book (collection) inspired by Dickinson's Master LEtters. Lucie Brock-Broido writes poetry that makes me tingle all over with envy.

[Chris Via]

Astonishing.
Video forthcoming on Leaf by Leaf.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading the Master Letters by Lucie Brock-Broido, I knew I was entering a fecund world/ mind of a poet. The complexity is truly beautiful and the language of course.
I read the poems. I gave myself over to them. I heard Gerard Manley Hopkins’ rhythms and Emily Dickinson’s thoughts (corroborated in the Notes later). I loved the sometimes cryptic but always inviting titles.
Listen:
How Can It Be I Am No Longer I

I Dont Know Who It Is, That Sings,
nor Did I, Would I Tell

Everything Husk to the Will

Into Those Great Countries of the Blue Sky of Which We Don’t Know Anything

Then I read the poet’s Notes and I went back to read poems whose note pulled me. I will now read the book again but I don’t want to interrupt the flow with the notes.
But her Preamble—the impetus for these poems was Emily Dickinson’s three Master Letters. The last lines of the Preamble being Emily’s words—“Dear Friend—You are like God. We pray to Him, & He answers “No.” Then we pray to Him to rescind the “No,” & He don’t answer at all…”
Anyway I loved the way I read this book— forwards then back. I recommend it for all poetry lovers. Carl Phillips mentioned Lucie in his book My Trade is Mystery and I am so glad I found her work.

[Xandria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ordered this book from a second-hand site and enjoyed the annotations a previous reader included in this collection. Reading someone else's thoughts on the poems and their editing suggestions (which actually made a couple poems better!) was really fun and interesting.

More to do with the actual collection--stunning. Brock-Broido has a way with words and how she chose to go about this collection was very fun for me because I love Dickinson so much. The poems that were formatted as letters were probably my favorite aside from Am Moor. And I enjoyed the notes at the back that explained where each poem's inspiration came from. I think Brock-Broido would be pleased that it was her that made me look up the Passenger Pigeon.

These were such sweet savory poems that I thoroughly enjoyed taking my time. I know I will read this collection many more times and look forward to doing so.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extreme lyricism inspired by Emily Dickinson's visionary letters &the plague poetry of Georg Trakl. Brock-Broido has created her own poetic universe here with gnarled diction both ancient & modern, scented syntax you can huff like gasoline, lines whipstitched together into gleaming sutures. Published by Knopf, this actually evokes the wildest tomes from Action Books -- say, Lara Glenum's "Maximum Gaga."

Highly recommended!

[Lauren G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

"One day I will return to the North & live here in a bright October that
goes on & on, like a flightless cambric morning that will not stop. Is this-
Sir-what you asked me to tell you?"

"After Pennsylvania, I couldn't breathe.
Why would what dies once keep on dying off
Over & over like a seam in an old velvet coat?"

[Connor Oswald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Master,,,

[emma]

“Rises, sets, by my own hand, dog days end. / even my self reminds me of you.”

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

These poems read like off-brand Decemberists lyrics; I would much rather read actual Emily. I rolled my eyes through this collection.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Am Moor

Am lean against.
Am the heavy hour

Hand at urge,
At the verge of one. Am the ice comb of the tonsured

Hair, am the second
Hand, halted, the velvet opera glove. Am slant. Am fen, the injure

Wind at withins,
Stranger where the storm forms a face if the body stands enough

In a weather this
Cripple & this rough. Am shunt. Was moon-shaped helmet left

In bog, was condition
Of a spirit shorn, childlike & herd. Was Andalusian, ambsace,

Bird. Am kept.
Was keeper of the badly marred, was furious done god, was

Patient, was bad
Luck, was nurse. Ninety badly wounded men lay baying

In the reddened reedy
Hay of Saxony, was surgeon to their flinch & hoop, was hospice

To their torso hall,
Was numinous creature to their dying

Off. Am numb.
Was shoulder & queer luck. Am among.

Was gaunt.
Was--why--or the mutton & moss. Was the rented room.

Was chamber & ambage
& tender & burn. Am esurient, was the hungry form.

Am anatomy.
Was the bleating thing.

*

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carrowmore

All about Carrowmore the lambs
Were blotched blue, belonging.

They were waiting for carnage or
Snuff. This is why they are born

To begin with, to end.
Ruminants do not frighten

At anything--gorge in the soil, butcher
Noise, the mere graze of predators.

All about Carrowmore
The rain quells for three days.

I remember how cold I was, the botched
Job of traveling. And just so.

Wherever I went I came with me.
She buried her bone barrette

In the ground's woolly shaft.
A tear of her hair, an old gift

To the burnt other who went
First. My thick braid, my ornament--

My belonging I
Remember how cold I will be.

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read through this book before, but never with the familiarity of Dickinson's letters--and not just the Master Letters, but a full selection of them. It helps. I appreciate more the voice that Brock-Broido uses here, and the way it widens the occasion of writing to someone referred to as "Master." What might be most difficult in reading the book is finding that space where Brock-Broido can stand independent of Dickinson, while still drawing from the Dickinsonian framework. Does the preface help with that? I don't think so. But I also don't think this volume could be presented without some kind of prefatory work.

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title refers to a couple of mysterious letters Emily Dickinson wrote someone, and supposedly ED is some sort of unifying feature of the book, but then there's also a poem about Ted Bundy and another about a professional executioner, so the book feels not just incoherent but schizophrenic.

And I object on principle to a collection of poems so precious, pretentious and obscure that you can't properly understand or appreciate them without a lengthy set of endnotes. It plays right into the undergraduate notion of poems as mysterious puzzles that you can "understand" once you know the secret references.

Ugh.

[Amy Lillis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing words

I really liked this collection. I was awed by the poem -as- letter. The epistolary poem. The author's word choices were stunning, but sometimes I questioned the need for such academic words. Some meaning was lost to me as I didn't understand her point. I will definitely revisit this collection, regardless.

[Hannah Shea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A feat of linguistic virtuosity meeting wild imagination, at the expense of each poem’s distinctiveness as a single, complete unit. The engagement with Dickinson is complex to the point of being complete submersion in Brock Broido’s hyper-verbal, maximalist ventriloquism rather than more distanced observation/theorizing. Dickinson is used as persona rather than treated as subject.

[Russel · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has really nice paper. God I hate poetry. Omg I fucking hate poetry.

It all sounds like poetry!!!

[Meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could read this once a year and keep finding new things.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carrowmore / The Supernatural Is Only the Natural, Disclosed / A Brief History of Asylum / Rampion / That Same Vagabond Sweetness / Work

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Kneel now with me while I am still
Alive & vivid, blessed by a season of high fever, still
Whole at the larynx & can speak these things
Aloud to you. For one season I have swept
A city by a storm. For you, love, my hair is famous
Hair, my hands are clean, large & white enough
For harm. At the throat of November, when the streets
Are waxy as the underbellies of awed swans, besieged
By wet, cremated leaves, an ancient light lights
The season in its ancient repetitions, old song
About the father, the bedeviling, the histories.
Historically, I am insatiable & cannot be beloved hard
Enough. I’m intoxicated, a little whore, lie
Now with me while I am still holy like
This” — “Work”

[Medina · Rating 2 out of 5]

These poems aren’t moving and they feel purposefully obscure and technically dense to the point where the poems don’t have the tool of contrast anymore on their side. And I think emulating Dickinson or centering her doesn’t work in the poet’s favor because you get this hollow technical homage without any of the clarity or soul (or brevity) of the original. I truly could hardly get through one poem let alone this entire book.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find reading LBB both wildly inspiring and wildly defeating. She is so masterful and THIS WAS HER SECOND BOOK and she must have spent all of her time reading and pasting quotes from things across the walls of her abode or she had a startlingly dazzling memory and like who was this magical creature who lived among us? Ugh, I can't handle it.

[Alissa Hattman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based loosely on three unsent letters (addressed "Dear Master" and "Recipient Unknown") that Emily Dickinson left behind, Lucie Brock-Broido's series of fifty-two poems and letter-poems are wonderfully surprising experiments in language. Her writing is strange, allusive, ornamental, haunted. It's a challenging collection to read, but worthwhile.

[Nikita Ladd · Rating 2 out of 5]

This poetry was a little hard for me to read! I think the language of it was a little bit beyond me, as were the references. Typically I'm drawn to more concrete language, and descriptions of the world around the writer, and this poetry feel more ethereal and less grounded.

[Paul Bisagni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucie Brock-Broido writes what the mind sees, torqued by quiet frenzies of the sublime and the eerie-quotidian.

[Keri Calhoun · Rating 4 out of 5]

mind blowing use of language. really looking forward to reading all her books...

[John Fay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucie had an amazing poetic vocabulary
Master Letters is based on letters written by Emily Dickinson.
An amazing work

[Aline]

immaculate grimoire of anthems for jealous angels. feels almost too delicious to be true!

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

died a little