A Little Middle of the Night

by Molly Brodak

The language of Molly Brodak’s first full-length collection, A Little Middle of the Night , is ever shifting, brightly sonic, and disarming while exploring the margin between nature and art, darkness and beauty, dreams and awakenings. As echoed in one epigraph from Emerson, these poems capture “the Exact and the Vast” of consciousness in intense lyric verse with an angular and almost scientific sensitivity. Here is a speaker intent on “Oh whole world, we choose / another.”
      This award-winning collection simmers with wit as Brodak confronts tragedy, childhood losses, transcendent love, and the question of art itself. Tinged with a suffering—“I was the littlest wastebasket. / I was my own church. Except— / scared, scared”—that rises above personal sorrow, her fierce and painterly poems redefine nature and art and what exists “Lately, there is spangled shade in my space / and a cold apple orchard to tend in place of consciousness.” As Reginald Shepherd said about the poems in Brodak’s first collection, the chapbook  Instructions for a Painting , her world is “‘small enough / to sing in all directions,’ and large enough to take us there.”

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is probably good, there were poems and individual lines i really liked, but overall i feel like it asked me to reach a little too far for meaning without ever making me feel particularly enthused to do that - just not the kind of poetry that tends to elicit much of a response out of me, i think!

[Ipsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story you’ll hear is: oh you’ve arrived too late! Hurry, join…

The first poem doesn't ask to sit. For Molly Brodak it is the pines, the clouds and the wind in between. It doesn’t stick to you. It does not hold you down. Because the first poem that you fit through is also what you move through. But it is that brief fracture in solitary cell where the world seeps in and runs right through again. The Vast seeps into the Exact, meshes Dreams with Mathematics. In other words you live your horror and you live in the world. And that’s that.

Words tether Molly to the malty earth and in turn the loamy underneath makes her words smell of the edgeless horizon. Most of the time, she takes you too far and leaves you stranded. The images scuttle away in the end but while you’re there, the mind frolics and is soothed.

I saw the angels embarrassed of the swamp. Blushed at each other,
like animals, blushed at the weird trills, the rot on the wind.

3.5

[Sammy Mylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

not really what i expected, i found most of her poems had very beautiful words/images but her style is very vague when it comes to overall meaning. the poems i liked best were the ones where i felt she did her usual vagueness and then cut right through in a single line with the heart of it, unfortunately these were few and far between! might just be personal preference tbh!

favourite poems:
underneath
a little middle of the night
drawer of cardinals
real world magic

[zac carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every knife
you push in a man
will want out.

RIP, molly.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tender, observant, hallucinatory, heartbreaking, and full of wonder. I grabbed this book the day after I read about Brodak's passing. I was unfamiliar with her work at the time of the news, and I'm glad to have spent time with it today. It felt like an old friend.

[Kat Dixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hot damn.

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Real World Magic

Doves preen in an alcove of matted oak
and the day goes blue. I stood, memorizing,
memorizing. I thought I had been awake—

I had hoped. The mind is a half life,
then, none. What’s worse? A snap of violet
lightning and unharm me! I said and awoke—

back into the beast, the dulled ache, dumb junk
clotted about the bed. For a weird while I sensed myself
formless in force, disarmed by a little sun, waking.

[ez · Rating 4 out of 5]

“i’m sorry for what i have always done. it will still happen.”

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm disappointed I don't love this collection. There were a few poems and lines that struck me, but nothing knocked me back the way some poems do.

"Mars Black"
A year goes by and there you are. / The man in the next car says don't take me to the hospital. / Goddamn most everything, goddamn us / right up the middle -- / aches of teeth and the hate spot / in my chest; I saw it my way / and died there.

"Whoever Said Hell Is Not Beautiful"
Down here you can walk way back / to that black vent in a Cambrian sea / and the thing at the lip / that wanted and tried.

"Folkways" & "Joseph Conrad's Last Novel (Which Is Comprised of Face Colors Used in His Previous Novels)"

"Real World Magic"
For a weird while I sensed myself / formless in force, disarmed by a little sun, waking.

[Robert Vaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd have given this ten stars if I could. A collection to read again. And again. I also read "Going Back to Sleep" from this book for National Poetry Month 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq2uH.... Molly is brilliant and I miss her.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"so tonight, I stay in glasses, read gait as guilt, of course or sure enough.

I'm sorry for what I have always done. It still will happen."

[River Snowdrop · Rating 4 out of 5]

A high 3.5 stars

[Meg Tuite · Rating 5 out of 5]

deep waters! LOVE!

[Abigail Zimmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many moving thoughts in examination of the self and of how one goes through the day that is so beautifully simple. Like this answer to “And How Did Your Rapture Turn Out”: "I said come watch the bats with me, / once. I just kept up. / That's how."

And: "I asked what is going to happen and he said it's happening"

[Eleanor]

Yes.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notable:
"North of North"
"Funny Old"
"I Hope You're Happy"
"Snow White"
"The First Poem"

[Luke Hillier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brodak is the only poet I've read who somehow gets away with language this obscured and fleeting. Like The Cipher, this offered me no satiation but was confusingly compelling all the same. In my review for that book, I ended up just highlighting the lines that struck me most, and I've decided to do the same here.

"...I'm in charge, good god, but not enough to stop the accidents and the accidents of these mortarless weeks; so tonight I stay in glasses, read gait as guilt, of course or sure enough. I'm sorry for what I have always done. It will still happen." (from "A Little Middle of the Night."
"...moving towards the gigantic until I became as small as I needed. I felt for the edge & left everyone." (from "Whoever Said Hell is Not Beautiful")
"For a weird while I sensed myself formless in force, disarmed by a little sun, waking." (from "Real World Magic")
"He said I'm going to leave you forever but I'll always move to any town you move to, and I'll be wearing different clothes, and you may not know that you are talking to me. Look." (from "Lake Superior")
"Somewhere, belly-white, a plume of white dust replaces a building, like some unintelligible word. Still. A chime, a blush of with what waste shall we rebuild approaches. All is waste. (from "Folkways")
"I asked what is going to happen and he said it's happening." (from "Mild Peril")

[Emma Bohn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really couldn't get a grip on most of the poems in this one to be honest, so maybe the fact I didn't particularly enjoy it comes down to me being a bit too daft for this poetry collection. A lot of the times it felt like I was just reading a bunch of random words strung together with no apparent rhyme or reason which was particularly disappointing and borderline frustrating when I kept rereading lines trying to make some kind of sense of them so I could follow the rest of the poem. Still, there were a few in here I did like (unsurprisingly they were the more bleak ones), with others I just liked a specific line or two in them. My personal favorites were Make Belief, Underneath, and Mild Peril. Maybe I'll pick this up again some time later and hopefully feels less dumb reading it a second time, lol.

[Udai · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I'm sorry for what I have always done. It still will happen.”

I can’t say I understood everything in this collection, but what understood was magical. I’d really recommend reading her memoir before delving into the collection.

I moved through this book like waves, back and forth, reading and rereading, trying to find what’s hidden, shedding skin and tears on my way.

Her descriptions of nature are so vivid.

I really don’t know what to write except that I was deeply touched by this tiny perfect book.

[Thomas Goddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything with scalloped edges.

A work that hits you with these delicate images discordantly paired with great sadness and unease

A curious little book of poems. I wasn't ready for it. I heard of her passing and ordered her work. I know she was an influence on a few friend-poets that I know.

Marvelous. Strange. Emotive. So curiously personal, both to as a reflection of the artist... as well as an intimate communication to the reader. Had a weird effect on me.

I will return to this collection a lot.

[Baileigh Limestahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish Molly was still with us so that I could tell her that every word of this meant so much to me and sparked so many emotions that I can’t even understand myself. This book felt like so many things that I have needed to hear finally being told to me for the first time. Rest in peace, Molly.

[birdbassador · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I'm sorry for what I have always done. It still will happen."

i felt like an intruder when i read this. she was telling me about medicine and dead birds and guilty fathers and mothers and i felt like i didn't belong there to hear about it.

[Rebecca Valley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe, probably, the best poetry collection I’ve read all year. “Wars begin inside of one person, imagine that.”

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection. I didn’t feel like I understood it fully, so I’ll probably need to revisit this one. “Real World Magic” was my favorite poem from it 🖤

[silas denver melvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

total knock out

[Angel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what I expected, but there isn't much quality to this book's contents. The poems were underwhelming and predictable. A few good moments, but mostly felt unpolished.

[Sameen Shakya · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Little Middle of the Night is the only poetry collection by American poet Molly Brodak who passed away in 2020. I read this book as I was browsing the Iowa Poetry Prize series and the title, as well as the poet's tragic life, caught my eye.

The poems in this collection are quiet yet intense. They are not obsessed with death, no, but they do seem to be waiting for it. There is a clarity to Brodak's writing that must've stemmed from the depression she suffered from throughout her life.

Are they devoid of beauty? No. Poetry, true poetry, can never be devoid of beauty, even when shirking it. Brodak's poetry shirked nothing and confronted everything but in a coy manner.

Reading this book was a haunting experience. Haunting but pleasant. RIP.

[Rose Jeanou · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible poet. This collection isn't completely consistent, but the poems who are good are amazing--there are a good many amazing ones--and merit the Plath comparisons for more positive reasons than are usually applied here.

[Katie Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

lucid dreamy poetry. sometimes dark, sometimes funny.