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Ossuaries
Dionne Brand’s hypnotic, urgent long poem is about the bones of fading cultures and ideas, about the living museums of spectacle where these bones are found. At the centre of Ossuaries is the narrative of Yasmine, a woman living an underground life, fleeing from past actions and regrets, in a perpetual state of movement. She leads a solitary clandestine life, crossing borders actual (Algiers, Cuba, Canada), and timeless. Cold-eyed and cynical, she contemplates the periodic crises of the contemporary world. This is a work of deep engagement, sensuality, and ultimate craft from an essential observer of our time and one of the most accomplished poets writing today.
128 pages, Paperback
First published March 30, 2010
About the author
Dionne Brand
70 books500 followersAs a young girl growing up in Trinidad, Dionne Brand submitted poems to the newspapers under the pseudonym Xavier Simone, an homage to Nina Simone, whom she would listen to late at night on the radio. Brand moved to Canada when she was 17 to attend the University of Toronto, where she earned a degree in Philosophy and English, a Masters in the Philosophy of Education and pursued PhD studies in Women’s History but left the program to make time for creative writing.
Dionne Brand first came to prominence in Canada as a poet. Her books of poetry include No Language Is Neutral, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Award and thirsty, finalist for the Griffin Prize and winner of the Pat Lowther Award for poetry. Brand is also the author of the acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, which was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award, and At the Full and Change of the Moon. Her works of non-fiction include Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return.
What We All Long For was published to great critical acclaim in 2005. While writing the novel, Brand would find herself gazing out the window of a restaurant in the very Toronto neighbourhood occupied by her characters. “I’d be looking through the window and I’d think this is like the frame of the book, the frame of reality: ‘There they are: a young Asian woman passing by with a young black woman passing by, with a young Italian man passing by,” she says in an interview with The Toronto Star. A recent Vanity Fair article quotes her as saying “I’ve ‘read’ New York and London and Paris. And I thought this city needs to be written like that, too.”
In addition to her literary accomplishments, Brand is Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.
For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/dionne-b...
Dionne Brand first came to prominence in Canada as a poet. Her books of poetry include No Language Is Neutral, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Award and thirsty, finalist for the Griffin Prize and winner of the Pat Lowther Award for poetry. Brand is also the author of the acclaimed novels In Another Place, Not Here, which was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award, and At the Full and Change of the Moon. Her works of non-fiction include Bread Out of Stone and A Map to the Door of No Return.
What We All Long For was published to great critical acclaim in 2005. While writing the novel, Brand would find herself gazing out the window of a restaurant in the very Toronto neighbourhood occupied by her characters. “I’d be looking through the window and I’d think this is like the frame of the book, the frame of reality: ‘There they are: a young Asian woman passing by with a young black woman passing by, with a young Italian man passing by,” she says in an interview with The Toronto Star. A recent Vanity Fair article quotes her as saying “I’ve ‘read’ New York and London and Paris. And I thought this city needs to be written like that, too.”
In addition to her literary accomplishments, Brand is Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph.
For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/dionne-b...
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
September 2, 2013
This a long poem and a very complex work that won the Griffin Prize for Poetry in 2010.
Be warned, this is not light reading. I cannot say I understood all of its twists and turns and I believe many reading it would need some guidance to appreciate it.
The title of the volume, “Ossuaries”, refers to the boxes that are used to keep bones, the hardest human material and what is left of the body after the soft tissue has decomposed over time. The ossuary is the metaphor in this work, and represents the place for the collection of culture, ideas and experience that would be left as the past recedes and the present pushes us forward. The work is divided into 15 sections each numerically titled and each of these sections contains tercets or three lined sections that roll out limitlessly and urgently, never stopping. Indeed, there are no periods in this work, no punctuation whatsoever, except for commas. So in a sense you feel hurtled through it. Some of the sections are told from the author’s point of view and others are narrated.
After the first ossuary, I was quite simply exhausted. I felt rushed and pulled and literally dragged through it. The story is told through Yasmine, a solitary woman living an underground life and perpetually on the move, fleeing from some of her past experiences, observations of the contemporary world, and regretted romances. A world traveler, she is trying to determine what will be left after she is gone. She concludes that whatever it is, it will not be good. It will be trauma, horror, massacres, repressive regimes, alienation and devastation. She has had many bitter experiences and they have left her cold and cynical. However, it is not all dark, every once in a while, she dredges up some spark of hopefulness and that forms a stark contrast to the pictures of poverty, repressive regimes and the massacres she describes.
This is a rather brooding book. Not an easy read. I spent considerable time trying to decipher it and at times was really quite confused. I never really figured it all out to my satisfaction (for example what is “the casual homicide of dresses”?) I can’t say I enjoyed it. It seems urgent, fierce, sorrowful and full of concern for the future. But perhaps that is the whole point. To experience what Yasmine has experienced. To shake us up a bit and makes us think, see and really recognize what is happening around us. Yasmine has appraised decades in space and time as well as her own experiences as a woman who has known poverty, racial discrimination, and the difficult course of romantic relationships. These have all led her to believe there is little grace and beauty left after that, and not much hope for the future.
Be warned, this is not light reading. I cannot say I understood all of its twists and turns and I believe many reading it would need some guidance to appreciate it.
The title of the volume, “Ossuaries”, refers to the boxes that are used to keep bones, the hardest human material and what is left of the body after the soft tissue has decomposed over time. The ossuary is the metaphor in this work, and represents the place for the collection of culture, ideas and experience that would be left as the past recedes and the present pushes us forward. The work is divided into 15 sections each numerically titled and each of these sections contains tercets or three lined sections that roll out limitlessly and urgently, never stopping. Indeed, there are no periods in this work, no punctuation whatsoever, except for commas. So in a sense you feel hurtled through it. Some of the sections are told from the author’s point of view and others are narrated.
After the first ossuary, I was quite simply exhausted. I felt rushed and pulled and literally dragged through it. The story is told through Yasmine, a solitary woman living an underground life and perpetually on the move, fleeing from some of her past experiences, observations of the contemporary world, and regretted romances. A world traveler, she is trying to determine what will be left after she is gone. She concludes that whatever it is, it will not be good. It will be trauma, horror, massacres, repressive regimes, alienation and devastation. She has had many bitter experiences and they have left her cold and cynical. However, it is not all dark, every once in a while, she dredges up some spark of hopefulness and that forms a stark contrast to the pictures of poverty, repressive regimes and the massacres she describes.
This is a rather brooding book. Not an easy read. I spent considerable time trying to decipher it and at times was really quite confused. I never really figured it all out to my satisfaction (for example what is “the casual homicide of dresses”?) I can’t say I enjoyed it. It seems urgent, fierce, sorrowful and full of concern for the future. But perhaps that is the whole point. To experience what Yasmine has experienced. To shake us up a bit and makes us think, see and really recognize what is happening around us. Yasmine has appraised decades in space and time as well as her own experiences as a woman who has known poverty, racial discrimination, and the difficult course of romantic relationships. These have all led her to believe there is little grace and beauty left after that, and not much hope for the future.
August 20, 2022
Holy shit. Dionne, we can't keep doing this.
September 18, 2012
I was absolutely blown away by this book. Stunning. Absolutely stunning.
I read it for an assignment in which we got to pick a book of poetry to read and write a short response, so I'll just post that here if anyone's interested:
Dionne Brand’s Griffin Award-winning collection of poetry, Ossuaries, along with her appointment to the post of Toronto’s Poet Laureate, has cemented Brand as one of the world’s leading contemporary poets. With a seemingly effortless poeticism and truly stunning vocabulary, Brand fuses experiences of society and social critiques across time periods and national borders. The reader experiences this all through the lens of Yasmine, once a young girl swept up in the revolutionary atmosphere of the seventies, now an embittered woman wondering at what she has accomplished, or rather what anyone could possibly accomplish in such a brutal world.
The book takes the form of a long poem, a series of fifteen ‘ossuaries’ which alternate between the first- and third-person voice of Yasmine. The book begins with a long, pitching ‘ossuary’ of social critique, detailing her former life:
[we] plunged repeatedly to our deaths only to be revived
by zoos, parades, experiments, exhibits, television sets,
oh we wanted to leave, we wanted to leave
the aspirated syllables and villages, the skeletal
dance floors, the vacant, vacant moons that tortured us, (12-13)
Using series of lists and repetition, Brand plunges Yasmine into the depths of her woeful memories, only to re-emerge in a life in which she has “lost verbs, whole, like the hull of almonds” (14); because of her naivety, she has forever lost her ability to live.
Written entirely in tercets, the poem takes on a hypnotic flow, ceaselessly repeating words and imagery, just as Yasmine has doomed herself to a life of endless monotony in a society which is, in her eyes, never to change. Through each tercet, Brand evokes a vivid image or emotion which can stand on its own, then allowing these segments to rub up against each other. Brand uses very few periods throughout to create a rapid flow which pulls the reader on, but then consciously contrasts this pace by pulling out to a third-person voice when describing the fateful actions which brought Yasmine to her current situation, as if Yasmine were still too traumatized to describe them directly herself.
Brand’s undeniable skill in her use of language and imagery are what make her poetry sparkle, even through the dark subject matter. The title itself forms a conceit which runs throughout the poem, reflected in the recurring bone and bodily imagery. The voice of Yasmine, looking back on her mistakes and the world which she has created for herself, sees only “this big world, our ossuary” (82). Not only does the image of an ossuary reflect her literal setting, a cave-like life lived in hiding, but also herself; she is sealed within an existence of exile and the soft tissue of her life has rotted all away, leaving only the hard bones of who she once was: “the woman, she, Yasmine they call her” (75).
Throughout Ossuaries, Brand leads the reader back and across “the thin diagonal between then and now” (82). Rarely do we meet a character as crisp and real as Yasmine in poetry. While much of the exact details of her life are ambiguous, Brand creates a perfect sense of the character herself—the hope and struggle, the sting of futility, and finally the resigned agony of a life lived ‘underground’.
Anyway, the point is, read it.
I read it for an assignment in which we got to pick a book of poetry to read and write a short response, so I'll just post that here if anyone's interested:
Dionne Brand’s Griffin Award-winning collection of poetry, Ossuaries, along with her appointment to the post of Toronto’s Poet Laureate, has cemented Brand as one of the world’s leading contemporary poets. With a seemingly effortless poeticism and truly stunning vocabulary, Brand fuses experiences of society and social critiques across time periods and national borders. The reader experiences this all through the lens of Yasmine, once a young girl swept up in the revolutionary atmosphere of the seventies, now an embittered woman wondering at what she has accomplished, or rather what anyone could possibly accomplish in such a brutal world.
The book takes the form of a long poem, a series of fifteen ‘ossuaries’ which alternate between the first- and third-person voice of Yasmine. The book begins with a long, pitching ‘ossuary’ of social critique, detailing her former life:
[we] plunged repeatedly to our deaths only to be revived
by zoos, parades, experiments, exhibits, television sets,
oh we wanted to leave, we wanted to leave
the aspirated syllables and villages, the skeletal
dance floors, the vacant, vacant moons that tortured us, (12-13)
Using series of lists and repetition, Brand plunges Yasmine into the depths of her woeful memories, only to re-emerge in a life in which she has “lost verbs, whole, like the hull of almonds” (14); because of her naivety, she has forever lost her ability to live.
Written entirely in tercets, the poem takes on a hypnotic flow, ceaselessly repeating words and imagery, just as Yasmine has doomed herself to a life of endless monotony in a society which is, in her eyes, never to change. Through each tercet, Brand evokes a vivid image or emotion which can stand on its own, then allowing these segments to rub up against each other. Brand uses very few periods throughout to create a rapid flow which pulls the reader on, but then consciously contrasts this pace by pulling out to a third-person voice when describing the fateful actions which brought Yasmine to her current situation, as if Yasmine were still too traumatized to describe them directly herself.
Brand’s undeniable skill in her use of language and imagery are what make her poetry sparkle, even through the dark subject matter. The title itself forms a conceit which runs throughout the poem, reflected in the recurring bone and bodily imagery. The voice of Yasmine, looking back on her mistakes and the world which she has created for herself, sees only “this big world, our ossuary” (82). Not only does the image of an ossuary reflect her literal setting, a cave-like life lived in hiding, but also herself; she is sealed within an existence of exile and the soft tissue of her life has rotted all away, leaving only the hard bones of who she once was: “the woman, she, Yasmine they call her” (75).
Throughout Ossuaries, Brand leads the reader back and across “the thin diagonal between then and now” (82). Rarely do we meet a character as crisp and real as Yasmine in poetry. While much of the exact details of her life are ambiguous, Brand creates a perfect sense of the character herself—the hope and struggle, the sting of futility, and finally the resigned agony of a life lived ‘underground’.
Anyway, the point is, read it.
August 31, 2021
Stunning!
Full review to come.
Full review to come.
July 13, 2023
Breathtaking work of literature. The poems are their own worlds — vibrant, gritty, full of life — its sounds and fury.
Brand has a little Acknowledgements section at the end of this book that reads: “The following works were instrumental during the writing of this poem.” And the first thing she writes is: “Theory: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx; The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Friedrich Engels”
You perhaps wouldn’t need the Acknowledgements section to know this, however. Brand explicitly mentions those two works in “ossuary IV”, presumably an ode from the protagonist’s return from Algiers and Cairo:
“he had of course never asked for forgiveness, she
had not forgiven him publicly, not to his face,
that is she had not said, “I forgive you”
though a deep hatred like forgiveness erupted in her,
that year, that year, fractious like parchment,
she grew lavenders in small clay pots, read The Origin
of the Family and The Eighteenth Brumaire, “The tradition of all
dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the
living ...” nursed the air of their small apartment
gave it patchouli incense, marijuana, eucalyptus oils,
the smoke of three thousand cigarettes, one after another,
the clatter of wooden beads around her neck and wrists”
Later in the same poem, Brand writes:
“when he opines, of their great mosques,
their cool stones, their great light signifying,
nothing between god and the human
she says maliciously who hefted the stone,
who carried the water, who fed the fires,
who opened the gates, who washed the clothes
who cut the wood, crushed the olives and palm into oils,
who bore the weight of all these gods,
whose eyes were put out to make their light
“when these people are in the world ...” Engels ran
around her skull “... that will be the end of it ...”
like water around the washed rim of a bowl”
The brief mentions of Cuba are mysterious and evocative and I am left with a lingering sense curiosity:
“what had been her life, what collection of events?
these then, the detonations,
the ones that led her to José Marti Airport”
I felt I was eavesdropping on the verse of a subversive, insurgent whispers of a liberation army, a story Assata Shakur might recount in an old rundown cafe:
“for now he’ll walk into the bank, for now
they are encircled by their beautiful predictions,
justice pumped through their veins, history will see
in the grizzled winter light,
she unlocks her finger from the steering wheel,
before he reaches the door she’s at his shoulder
“I’ll go, comrade.” That last formality,
ground as though she’d quarried that sentence,
for the whole of their erogeny
this way she ends things and begins them,
a give in his muscles, as his assent,
“Power ...” he begins, “to the people.” She ends
you would think, you would think,
she felt fear,
none of them did
…the brown dragonfly, rusted wings,
flies along the highway out of town in long leaps,
it defies its cratered flanks, its overheated gasket
the earthbound metal of its thorax,
its compound eyes survey each angle of the flight,
for cops, patrols”
The poems persist surreally, in a dream-like sequence, as Brand more than once mentions her “dreams were full of prisons” but such time incarcerated is full of plotting also, ushering in another world, that’s possible, necessary, breathing, on her way:
“another time when time isn’t measured
like now, look, man, this ain’t for me,
let’s go on, find another world, find some elevation, cool?
……his time in the penitentiary,
when he’d read Marx and Lenin
and took the nickname Trotsky, from a brother”
Brand has a little Acknowledgements section at the end of this book that reads: “The following works were instrumental during the writing of this poem.” And the first thing she writes is: “Theory: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx; The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State by Friedrich Engels”
You perhaps wouldn’t need the Acknowledgements section to know this, however. Brand explicitly mentions those two works in “ossuary IV”, presumably an ode from the protagonist’s return from Algiers and Cairo:
“he had of course never asked for forgiveness, she
had not forgiven him publicly, not to his face,
that is she had not said, “I forgive you”
though a deep hatred like forgiveness erupted in her,
that year, that year, fractious like parchment,
she grew lavenders in small clay pots, read The Origin
of the Family and The Eighteenth Brumaire, “The tradition of all
dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the
living ...” nursed the air of their small apartment
gave it patchouli incense, marijuana, eucalyptus oils,
the smoke of three thousand cigarettes, one after another,
the clatter of wooden beads around her neck and wrists”
Later in the same poem, Brand writes:
“when he opines, of their great mosques,
their cool stones, their great light signifying,
nothing between god and the human
she says maliciously who hefted the stone,
who carried the water, who fed the fires,
who opened the gates, who washed the clothes
who cut the wood, crushed the olives and palm into oils,
who bore the weight of all these gods,
whose eyes were put out to make their light
“when these people are in the world ...” Engels ran
around her skull “... that will be the end of it ...”
like water around the washed rim of a bowl”
The brief mentions of Cuba are mysterious and evocative and I am left with a lingering sense curiosity:
“what had been her life, what collection of events?
these then, the detonations,
the ones that led her to José Marti Airport”
I felt I was eavesdropping on the verse of a subversive, insurgent whispers of a liberation army, a story Assata Shakur might recount in an old rundown cafe:
“for now he’ll walk into the bank, for now
they are encircled by their beautiful predictions,
justice pumped through their veins, history will see
in the grizzled winter light,
she unlocks her finger from the steering wheel,
before he reaches the door she’s at his shoulder
“I’ll go, comrade.” That last formality,
ground as though she’d quarried that sentence,
for the whole of their erogeny
this way she ends things and begins them,
a give in his muscles, as his assent,
“Power ...” he begins, “to the people.” She ends
you would think, you would think,
she felt fear,
none of them did
…the brown dragonfly, rusted wings,
flies along the highway out of town in long leaps,
it defies its cratered flanks, its overheated gasket
the earthbound metal of its thorax,
its compound eyes survey each angle of the flight,
for cops, patrols”
The poems persist surreally, in a dream-like sequence, as Brand more than once mentions her “dreams were full of prisons” but such time incarcerated is full of plotting also, ushering in another world, that’s possible, necessary, breathing, on her way:
“another time when time isn’t measured
like now, look, man, this ain’t for me,
let’s go on, find another world, find some elevation, cool?
……his time in the penitentiary,
when he’d read Marx and Lenin
and took the nickname Trotsky, from a brother”
July 10, 2020
I don’t vibe with poetry really.
August 18, 2024
Absolutely fucking brilliant
Me whispering to this poetry collection: abolition now
This poetry collection had me by the throat with the last line of the first page "my dreams were full of prisons"
Banger lines include the following (to be compiles in full later:
"My every waking was incarcerated"
"But no one/expects the violence of glances, of offices,/of walkways and train stations, of bathroom mirrors"
"What brutal hours, what brutal days,/do not say, oh find the good in it, do not say,/ there was virtue; there was no virtue, not even in me"
Me whispering to this poetry collection: abolition now
This poetry collection had me by the throat with the last line of the first page "my dreams were full of prisons"
Banger lines include the following (to be compiles in full later:
"My every waking was incarcerated"
"But no one/expects the violence of glances, of offices,/of walkways and train stations, of bathroom mirrors"
"What brutal hours, what brutal days,/do not say, oh find the good in it, do not say,/ there was virtue; there was no virtue, not even in me"
August 29, 2025
“lived and loved, common oxymoron,
if I have lived, I have not loved,
and if I have loved, I cannot have lived
it was difficult to live and love at the same time,
you see what I mean,
since to live is to be rapacious as claws, to have
the most efficient knives and broken beer bottles,
needles, powers of attorney,
nonchalance, indifference, negligence
to love is an impediment to this hard business
of living
so I cannot have loved, not me”
ossuary iii
if I have lived, I have not loved,
and if I have loved, I cannot have lived
it was difficult to live and love at the same time,
you see what I mean,
since to live is to be rapacious as claws, to have
the most efficient knives and broken beer bottles,
needles, powers of attorney,
nonchalance, indifference, negligence
to love is an impediment to this hard business
of living
so I cannot have loved, not me”
ossuary iii
February 23, 2022
“to inhabit whole,
which is to exist simply, the bone
is an organ like any other”
which is to exist simply, the bone
is an organ like any other”
July 25, 2011
Dionne Brand's Griffin Poetry Prize-winning Ossuaries is an extended verse account of the wrenching, troubled life of Yasmine, who lives constantly on the move, assuming new identities to escape activities somewhat vague in their specific intents, but decidedly explosive and violent in their outcomes. Layered over and drifted artfully around the central story are meditations on cultural and historical shifts and evolution: what disappears in the process, what changes, and what bones and remnants are left behind for future generations to unearth and decipher.
Almost 10 years later, the events of September 11th are emerging in varying forms in literature and popular culture. It seems some of the most profound renderings are sufficiently particular in detail, but not so much so that they cannot resonate more broadly, taking in other cataclysmic historical events. Such is the case with Brand's evocations, which not only echo what happened in New York City, but Oklahoma City, London, Mumbai and other scenes of urban terrorism shattering comfortable, mundane, day-to-day life: "the stumbling shattered dress for work ... the seared handbags, the cooked briefcases ... it was just past nine in any city ..."
An ossuary is a container, building or location meant to house human skeletal remains in their final resting places. While suggesting peace and finality on one level, perhaps mystery and portent on another if those resting places are unearthed generations later, Brand's ossuaries feel open, unresolved, anything but peaceful. Even the lack of punctuation at the end of each ossuary segment within the long poem gives literal lack of closure to each chapter in Yasmine's edgily peripatetic existence.
Yasmine has suppressed love and tenderness in her own life, hardened (ossified, even) her heart, glossed and silted over her own personal trail. Still, occasional traces of wistfulness in her observations ("the children mattered, or so she told herself"), or at least acknowledgement that she has held herself too harshly and rigorously ("except it was always there / struck, harder, the lack of self-forgiveness, / aluminum, metallic, artic, blinding") seem to betray that she would like to leave a trace, have someone care. Finally, that seems to be what Ossuaries encapsulates: the traces that people leave, intentionally or unintentionally, destructively or tenderly - in the world, on each other, and in a collective impact on the environment, culture and history.
here we lie in folds, collected stones
in the museum of spectacles,
our limbs displayed, fract and soluble
Almost 10 years later, the events of September 11th are emerging in varying forms in literature and popular culture. It seems some of the most profound renderings are sufficiently particular in detail, but not so much so that they cannot resonate more broadly, taking in other cataclysmic historical events. Such is the case with Brand's evocations, which not only echo what happened in New York City, but Oklahoma City, London, Mumbai and other scenes of urban terrorism shattering comfortable, mundane, day-to-day life: "the stumbling shattered dress for work ... the seared handbags, the cooked briefcases ... it was just past nine in any city ..."
An ossuary is a container, building or location meant to house human skeletal remains in their final resting places. While suggesting peace and finality on one level, perhaps mystery and portent on another if those resting places are unearthed generations later, Brand's ossuaries feel open, unresolved, anything but peaceful. Even the lack of punctuation at the end of each ossuary segment within the long poem gives literal lack of closure to each chapter in Yasmine's edgily peripatetic existence.
Yasmine has suppressed love and tenderness in her own life, hardened (ossified, even) her heart, glossed and silted over her own personal trail. Still, occasional traces of wistfulness in her observations ("the children mattered, or so she told herself"), or at least acknowledgement that she has held herself too harshly and rigorously ("except it was always there / struck, harder, the lack of self-forgiveness, / aluminum, metallic, artic, blinding") seem to betray that she would like to leave a trace, have someone care. Finally, that seems to be what Ossuaries encapsulates: the traces that people leave, intentionally or unintentionally, destructively or tenderly - in the world, on each other, and in a collective impact on the environment, culture and history.
here we lie in folds, collected stones
in the museum of spectacles,
our limbs displayed, fract and soluble
October 5, 2012
Dionne Brand is one of the speakers at the Margaret Atwood talk I'll be attending in a couple of weeks. On a whim I picked up this poetry collection at the library, mainly because I liked the title. I loved it. Basically the entire book is a single poem telling the story of a woman named Yasmine. Yasmine's story, and her thought process, are quite bleak.I'm really surprised I hadn't heard of her before, especially as she's Toronto's Poet Laureate.
November 15, 2014
“so don’t tell me how love will rescue me, I was carnivorous about love, I ate love to the ankles, my thighs are gnawed with love still and yet I cannot have loved, since living was all I could do and for that, I was caged in bone spur endlessly”
January 18, 2022
I lived and loves, some might say,
in momentous times,
looking back, my dreams were full of prisons
* * *
to undo, to undo and undo and undo this infinitive
of arrears, their fissile mornings,
their fragile, fragile symmetries of gain and loss
* * *
I loved and lives, as I said, for a time,
looking up from water like sea shells,
I arrived where the sonorous oceans took me
* * *
oh heart, oh heart, blind like daylight,
when they came back, it was Albany and clear,
1977, from Algiers and Cairo and she's forgiven him
* * *
I must confess, I must, that early on
it was nothing to me, believe me,
you could dip your dingy hand in my chest
* * *
this genealogy she's made by hand, this good silk lace,
Engels plaited to Bird, Claudia Jones edgestitched
to Monk, Rosa Luxemburg braids Coltrane
* * *
venus, I could walk there on the ragged edge,
full of broken glass, ripped steel,
its ridge of bee stings
* * *
Havana, Yasmine arrived one early evening,
the stem of an orange dress,
a duffle bag, limp, with no possessions
* * *
what can I say about the storms,
the suns, the evenings, the moons
which have left the skies
* * *
detonations, bullets,
there is the amber frisson of charged particles,
gravitational force so extravagant it is silence itself
* * *
In the museum I sat with Jacob Lawrence's war,
his "victory", red and drenched, looked like defeat,
of course
* * *
one will leave at Corinth, one will make a way at Utica,
one at Sycamore, one split another highway,
she'll take Utica, deluged in a thousand years of silt
* * *
if only I had something to tell you, from here,
some good thing that would weather
the atmospheres of the last thirty years
* * *
not until April did she make her way,
across the Niagara River,
the drop from rail to water, decisive and honest
* * *
they ask sometimes, who could have lived,
each day,
who could have lived each day knowing
in momentous times,
looking back, my dreams were full of prisons
- ossuary I, pg. 9
* * *
to undo, to undo and undo and undo this infinitive
of arrears, their fissile mornings,
their fragile, fragile symmetries of gain and loss
- ossuary II, pg. 21
* * *
I loved and lives, as I said, for a time,
looking up from water like sea shells,
I arrived where the sonorous oceans took me
- ossuary III, pg. 31
* * *
oh heart, oh heart, blind like daylight,
when they came back, it was Albany and clear,
1977, from Algiers and Cairo and she's forgiven him
- ossuary IV, pg. 39
* * *
I must confess, I must, that early on
it was nothing to me, believe me,
you could dip your dingy hand in my chest
- ossuary V, pg. 47
* * *
this genealogy she's made by hand, this good silk lace,
Engels plaited to Bird, Claudia Jones edgestitched
to Monk, Rosa Luxemburg braids Coltrane
- ossuary VI, pg. 52
* * *
venus, I could walk there on the ragged edge,
full of broken glass, ripped steel,
its ridge of bee stings
- ossuary VII, pg. 59
* * *
Havana, Yasmine arrived one early evening,
the stem of an orange dress,
a duffle bag, limp, with no possessions
- ossuary VIII, pg. 62
* * *
what can I say about the storms,
the suns, the evenings, the moons
which have left the skies
- ossuary IX, pg. 68
* * *
detonations, bullets,
there is the amber frisson of charged particles,
gravitational force so extravagant it is silence itself
- ossuary X, pg. 70
* * *
In the museum I sat with Jacob Lawrence's war,
his "victory", red and drenched, looked like defeat,
of course
- ossuary XI, pg. 80
* * *
one will leave at Corinth, one will make a way at Utica,
one at Sycamore, one split another highway,
she'll take Utica, deluged in a thousand years of silt
- ossuary XII, pg. 90
* * *
if only I had something to tell you, from here,
some good thing that would weather
the atmospheres of the last thirty years
- ossuary XIII, pg. 103
* * *
not until April did she make her way,
across the Niagara River,
the drop from rail to water, decisive and honest
- ossuary XIV, pg. 114
* * *
they ask sometimes, who could have lived,
each day,
who could have lived each day knowing
- ossuary XV, pg. 122
February 15, 2024
some massacre was underway, some repression, how anyone can live this way.... how life can go on around you...
what brutal hours, what brutal days, do not say, oh find the good in it, do not say, there was virtue; there was no virtue, not even in me let us begin from there
prison walls and borders have become sedimented past silt and stone in language and dreams but underground the guerrillas, comrades, and angels, have always will always are fighting right now, the heart is an incendiary device, don't be scared, the world the fighter leaves behind to live in the cracks of the dreams in the underground of the undone, ungiven, unsought is more fearsome than that ahead, even if prison, even if assassination, even if fatal, even if suicide, even if riots, you're ready to die but are you ready to kill the jail guard, the banker, the sunrise, gravity ?
if we could exhume ourselves from these mass graves if we could return through this war as if it were we who needed redemption instead of this big world
it's all eroding and she knows what no one here will know how in four millennia only one wall or two will survive
it is not enough to change the bourgeois state, you have to bring it down her whole existence was mourning, so what ?
peace to engels, bird, claudia jones, monk, rosa luxemburg, and coltrane
the most beautiful bank robbery imaginable
what brutal hours, what brutal days, do not say, oh find the good in it, do not say, there was virtue; there was no virtue, not even in me let us begin from there
prison walls and borders have become sedimented past silt and stone in language and dreams but underground the guerrillas, comrades, and angels, have always will always are fighting right now, the heart is an incendiary device, don't be scared, the world the fighter leaves behind to live in the cracks of the dreams in the underground of the undone, ungiven, unsought is more fearsome than that ahead, even if prison, even if assassination, even if fatal, even if suicide, even if riots, you're ready to die but are you ready to kill the jail guard, the banker, the sunrise, gravity ?
if we could exhume ourselves from these mass graves if we could return through this war as if it were we who needed redemption instead of this big world
it's all eroding and she knows what no one here will know how in four millennia only one wall or two will survive
it is not enough to change the bourgeois state, you have to bring it down her whole existence was mourning, so what ?
peace to engels, bird, claudia jones, monk, rosa luxemburg, and coltrane
the most beautiful bank robbery imaginable
August 11, 2026
Dionne Brand is the most admirable and talented poet warrior who positions themself against the violent invisible architecture of modernity. If I didn’t know you, I would say this is a long poem about a beautiful, beautiful woman who robbed a bank and hates the world. If I knew you, I would talk your ear off about the Grey space between love and power, the reality of fugitivity, Jacob Lawrence, the periodic table, ontological vulnerability, corporate banality, and somehow, as always, Nathaniel Mackey.
“lived and loved, common oxymoron,
if I have lived, I have not loved,
and if I have loved, I cannot have lived
it was difficult to live and love at the same time,
you see what I mean,
since to live is to be rapacious as claws, to have
the most efficient knives and broken beer bottles,
needles, powers of attorney,
nonchalance, indifference, negligence
to love is an impediment to this hard business
of living
so I cannot have loved, not me
…..
the night dew we collected at our throats, cackling
the cardamom aroma of our breaths, the cinnamon
we rubbed in our hands before touching
the basil leaves with which we covered ourselves
obviously my rainy rainy eyes, my earth filled hair
all this I brought across sticky bitumen highways”
my rainy rainy eyes….
“lived and loved, common oxymoron,
if I have lived, I have not loved,
and if I have loved, I cannot have lived
it was difficult to live and love at the same time,
you see what I mean,
since to live is to be rapacious as claws, to have
the most efficient knives and broken beer bottles,
needles, powers of attorney,
nonchalance, indifference, negligence
to love is an impediment to this hard business
of living
so I cannot have loved, not me
…..
the night dew we collected at our throats, cackling
the cardamom aroma of our breaths, the cinnamon
we rubbed in our hands before touching
the basil leaves with which we covered ourselves
obviously my rainy rainy eyes, my earth filled hair
all this I brought across sticky bitumen highways”
my rainy rainy eyes….
Read
March 5, 2025As with much poetry, this made me feel kind of stupid (so we return to this pattern after my brief moment of feeling less stupid reading Philip Larkin). Only I felt a little less stupid this time since there was some kind of narrative I could follow for most of the poems, which form an overarching story about a central character and her brush with radical politics. It was interesting enough, as was the language, though I still feel like I was missing a lot - sure, I can see the patterns of three blank-verse lines grouped on each page, but was there some deeper poetic structure or more subtle linguistic art I failed to grasp? Or is it simpler than I'm imagining it to be? I also got a bit of a longing for a poetry that takes itself a little less seriously - sure, Brand is writing about serious topics, but it doesn't mean your choice of words has to be so damn sombre all the time, does it? Surely language can be "poetic" without falling into the tropes of what we expect from the traditional "poetic register", especially in 2010, right?
February 8, 2020
For me, this book seemed “very stream of conscious” poetry. I couldn’t quite tell if there was a narrative thread or a main character even though there seemed to be one at times. An ossuary is a structure built with the bones of humans. I looked it up online. This book seemed replete with many bones, ghosts, and relics of the past but a lot of it went over my head.
March 18, 2024
“So don’t tell me how love will rescue me,
I was carnivorous about love, I ate love to the ankles,
My thighs are gnawed with love
still and yet I cannot have loved,
since living was all I could do and for that,
I was caged in bone spur endlessly.”
“If only I had something good to tell you, from here,
some good thing that would weather
the atmosphere of the last thirty years.”
I was carnivorous about love, I ate love to the ankles,
My thighs are gnawed with love
still and yet I cannot have loved,
since living was all I could do and for that,
I was caged in bone spur endlessly.”
“If only I had something good to tell you, from here,
some good thing that would weather
the atmosphere of the last thirty years.”
February 25, 2020
Probably the most plotted and narrative of the poems I've read, adding a strong flow-through and authorial voice to contemplations of loneliness and identity and life and death.
October 30, 2023
Intriguing concepts within the poems, all around solid reads.
Read
June 30, 2024to quote my sister, dionne brand is to canada what margaret atwood thinks she is
July 21, 2025
The language is beautiful, if a bit nonsensical and stiff. There were points of contemplation, but nothing really moved me. Fantastic imagery. Maybe I’ll read more of this author’s work.
March 13, 2026
okay …… some incredible moments and perhaps i should’ve just read this more closely and i love the idea of the body as an ossuary… how horrific!!! and maybe something for potential thesis ….
February 13, 2023
**3.65 stars
“The day, the withering in the mirrors,
She cannot help but notice the years to come,
The door swings open
They are brilliant those calendars spread out ahead,
and he might, or might not, be in them,
But she will”
🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻
“The day, the withering in the mirrors,
She cannot help but notice the years to come,
The door swings open
They are brilliant those calendars spread out ahead,
and he might, or might not, be in them,
But she will”
🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻
Currently Reading
March 9, 2011(OK, so the title may explain a large part of my motivation for getting this one.)
May 6, 2014
Dionne Brand joined us at Kingston WritersFest 2012. You can read more about Dionne and the Festival here: www.kingstonwritersfest.ca
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June 13, 2018Lines from “Ossuary V”:
will my bones glitter beyond these ages,
will they burn beyond the photographs’
crude economy
will my bones glitter beyond these ages,
will they burn beyond the photographs’
crude economy
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews