Rookery

by Traci Brimhall

Normal0falsefalsefalseEN-USX-NONEX-NONE Traveling to the most intimate extremes of the human heart Fraught with madness, brutality, and ecstasy, Traci Brimhall’s Rookery delves into the darkest and most remote corners of the human experience. From the graveyards and battlefields of the Civil War to the ancient forests of Brazil, from desire to despair, landscapes both literal and emotional are traversed in this unforgettable collection of poems. Brimhall guides readers through ever-winding mazes of heartbreak and treachery, and the euphoric dreams of missionaries. The end of days, the intoxication of religion that at times borders on terror, and the post-evangelical experience intertwine with the haunting redemptions and metamorphoses found in violence. These tender yet ruthless poems, brimming with danger and longing, lure readers to “a place where everyone is transformed by suffering.”

Genres: Poetry, Southern Gothic

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, 2012), winner of the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award.

Reviews

[el · Rating 3 out of 5]

hate to be a killjoy but i do think it's weird as hell to romanticize racist confederate-supporting men who you (or your "I") reenacted civil war fight sequences with.

i'm not entirely sure if "the bullet collector" is a persona poem or written out of real lived experience. regardless, its presence within the collection was so off-putting that i could barely focus on the 30+ pages that followed. i find it hilarious brimhall chose to write about dancing by the fire the night before the speaker's lover ran off to shoot the bluecoats trying to end chattel slavery. particularly hilarious was this section of the poem:

I fell asleep to the sound / of artillery and dreamed about a flock of birds burning / as they flew.

if this is traci brimhall trying to embody the willful and unthinking anti-blackness of southern white women in america's recent past, bravo. when read like this, the quote's absurdity feels truly potent (it almost reads like satire to me). considering brimhall references having sex in a confederate graveyard in a completely different poem, i'm doubtful she wrote any of this out of a need to understand or examine the plight of black people and it pisses me off that such a violent history is employed as a backdrop for her "nature is beautiful and brutal" genre of poetry. 2.5/5.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a recent interview published in the Boxcar Poetry Review, poet Traci Brimhall said this about her new book, Rookery, and its title: "One day in a coffee shop I was trying to write away from personal narratives, so I started riffing off the definitions of rookery (1. Colony of rooks, 2. A group of breeding sea mammals, 3. A tenement house) and ended up with these short prose poems about betrayal, family, pain, violence, and God. I liked the idea that you could start with a word and it could contain everything."

And after reading Brimhall's first collection, I have to say that I agree. Rookery contains haunting poems of struggles between love and loss, life and death. I know that I often use the adjective "haunting" to describe a poet's work, but in this case, I could find no other word. Brimhall's poetry takes the reader through surreal dreams and real tragedies, spiritual experiences and sexual encounters.

Brimhall constructs her books out of elegies, prayers, aubades and nocturnes. Many poems cradle the violence of our world. For instance, in "Elegy with Mosquitoes, Peppermints, and a Snapping Turtle," she chronicles the actions of a father who shoots a turtle: "When I pointed to the snapping turtle's snout/peeking above the surface, my father/got his rifle and aimed for its head//Its body didn't jerk, but a slow red stream/uncurled in the water." Another poem by Brimhall, "Fiat Lux" starts off with a disturbing conversation between two sisters: "My sister asks what ate the bird's eyes/as she cradles the dead chickadee she found/on the porch. Ants, I say, knowing the soft, ocular//cells are the easiest way into the feast of heart/liver, kidney." As violent as these scenes are, Brimhall's words are soft, lyrical, almost dreamlike. As a reader, we almost feel as if we are glimpsing a surreal world where what is in front of us, isn't quite real.

While many of Brimhall's poems unfold a story before us, others paint pictures of a specific scene. Once again, dark images haunt her world. For example, "Aubade with a Broken Neck" portrays a narrator who explains: "The first night you don't come home/summer rain shakes the clematis./I bury the dead moth I found in our bed/scratch up a rutabaga and eat it rough/with dirt."

Brimhall's collection is one of the best I have read this year. I know this because long after I put her work down, I am remembering images. And at night, I am dreaming of dead birds, of drownings, of women who speak in strange tongues.

[Kasey Jueds · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an amazement. I don't understand why it took me so long to read it, since I've read (and loved) Traci Brimhall's poems in journals and since so many friends and people I admire love her work. Rookery is gorgeous and incredible and full of poems I read again and again and again, which is why it took me so long to finish the collection. I love the feeling of having discovered a new author - for me, esp. a poet - to adore so deeply; it seems to make everything in the world light up. Glad to have Brimhall's two other books to look forward to, and glad she is young, with hopefully many, many more books ahead of her.

[Sandy Longhorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rookery is divided into three sections and I'm thankful for that. I began reading the first section, "1. (n) A colony of rooks," one afternoon recently. (Each section is title for a definition of "rookery" and each section title includes a prose poem rumination on that definition. Beautiful!) So, the first section deals with a difficult marriage in which one partner appears to be having an affair. There are hints at a lost child as well. The speaker of the poems is loyal to the marriage, yet, with great complications she cannot bring herself to leave her unfaithful lover. There is such heartbreak and sadness in these poems, and such beauty that I had to take a break after finishing section one. I was full to bursting with emotion.

Here is the opening of "Aubade with a Fox and a Birthmark"

You crawl into bed, apologies and insect wings
in your hair. I forgive the way you touched her knees,
your amber memory of her body. I make you tell me

how her pleasure sounded--a fox with its paw
in a trap's jaw, blood on her thigh.

Wow. There is definitely an echo of Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being throughout this first section, another book that left me full to bursting.

I am stunned by the force of the honesty in these poems and the deftness of the images, largely drawn from nature, but in new and unexpected ways.

Here is the ending of "Noli Me Tangere"

But we are minor kingdoms of salt and heat.
We trace each other's scars--proof of our small

green hearts and violent beginnings, engines of cell
and nerve, yielding to a silent, lonely union.

Enough said.

Section two, "2. (n) A breeding place," takes us back to the speaker's childhood and sexual awakening; here religion also begins to take a prominent position and that position is one of questioning. There are encounters with men heightened with sexual tension, there are mission trips and talk of the rapture, and there are always stunning and haunting metaphors.

In "Chastity Belt Lesson" the speaker is touring a museum with a display about the Middle Ages. It bears mentioning that the speaker is making this tour with her father, not her mother, who enters the poem in the final lines with a subtle zing. Here we learn that during the Crusades, chastity belts were "not for the Crusader's wives." Instead, the were

..................................for girls when the streets bristled

with arrows. When the air reeked of burning roofs,
............and men's voices swarmed like hornets.
....Mothers and daughters pushed tips of keys into their throats

and swallowed.

And then, the stunner, the locks described as "Two serrated kisses between their legs." And finally, the "girls surrendered // their prayers to the mouths of soldiers." Wow. These poem do exactly what great poems should do; they leave me speechless.

Finally, section three, "3. (n) A crowded tenement house," takes us on a more general journey of violence in this fragile world. Here we see the speaker's religious crisis deepening. There are poems for the women of the Triangle Waist Shirt Factory fire and the women in The Odyssey who kept the suitors company in Odysseus' house and thus paid with their lives. There is a poem for Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who killed her newborn child when the slave hunters closed in. And there are poems that question our humanity.

Here is the opening of "Battle Hymn"

Lord, I have seen a mother pull her son's arm
............from its socket and know that in years to come

when he sees her cry, his shoulder will ache
............and he will love her harder. I have seen myself

ravenous with God-fearing hold a hammer
............over something I cherished.

I'll leave you then with these lines from "Prayer to Delay the Apocalypse," Dear Reader, and urge you to read this book if what you've seen here appeals.

"Tell me heaven will be like Venice--dirty, beautiful / and sinking."
"Take the ghosts first, / they've gone mad grieving for the world."
"Let us continue wandering in these perishable machines // made of dirt and music."
"...like an angel / carry me to the end of the world and lay me down."

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this book 5000 stars, I would. This one is definitely on my top list of poetry titles that would be by my side if I were stranded on a deserted island. There's not enough room here for the praise I would like to express, so let me say this: if you haven't yet read this collection, rush out and buy it now; if you already own it, move it to the top of your pile as soon as possible. Traci Brimhall deserves all of the accolades she has received and I feel so privileged to have the opportunity to read her work. My own copy looks like a road map from all the underlining, such rich passages, such beauty in each poem.

[Anatoly Molotkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The body in so much pain// the soul can no longer keep it. This is how/ it happens - something in the earth awakens// and summons us." A moving and deeply felt poetry collection that insists on a dialog with the dead - with the world larger than this current life. A pleasure to reread.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, evocative, and chilling.

The book is divided into three sections, each beginning with stunning prose poems as definitions. The first two sections were vivid and haunting, often exploring metaphors of animals to examine our own kinds of violence and need. The last section though, a crowded tenement house, is what really sets this book apart for me. The poem about the Triangle Waist Shirt Factory Fire and the poem entitled "At a Party on Ellis Island, Watching Fireworks" were particularly beautiful and sad.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is gorgeous language here--Brimhall clearly is a master of metaphor and image. But I have to say that by the time I finished the book, I felt exhausted by the sameness of the poems in terms of length, form, and tone. There was no relief from the density of both language and content. I would have welcomed a short, simple (in the sense of plain language) poem. But, in general, this is a beautiful book and worth reading.

[Evelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a gorgeous and well organized first book of poems. Brimhall truly creates a fresh take on old subjects, and provides satisfaction for those of us who are drawn to the visceral and violent truth of nature.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an astonishing book of poems that brought me deeper and deeper into the world of the natural. Each piece is poignant and beautiful, and work so well with every other.

[Gerald Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read and reread this book, I love this lady- it is beautiful
.... and I am actually reading it again

[Stephen Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was exiting Saint Stephen’s Basilica (a name I am particularly fond of) in Budapest, when, in middle of the church square overlooking the Danube River, I noticed a giant of a man, at least two meters high, dressed in Medieval Knight’s garb complete with a shiny armor breastplate engraved with a Tural. His head was helmetless, and his hair was long and braided to the middle of his back. His facial features were not unkind, but his expression was stoic and he looked like he had been in a few brawls in his lifetime. On his extended right arm, roosting on a leather sleeve, was an enormous eagle (which I know now to be a White-tailed Eagle, a species that can attain in maturity15 pounds in weight, 92 inches in length, and 92 inches in wingspan. This bird looked like it was all that and more). The man turned to us and smiled, not quite an evil smile but more of a condescending smile, and seeming to single me out from the small group I was in (my wife, a couple who were our best friends, and the female tour guide) he began approaching me with determined strides. Now, granted, this is a vacation I was on, and I was in a tourist-thriving city, and the man was wearing tourist-attraction clothing and had an eagle (by God) on his arm, but if I were in Detroit and were coming out of a restaurant at night and this same man, minus the eagle of course, was wearing a black leather jacket and a knit cap, I might have thought that this was going to be one of those situations where I would have to push my wife and friends behind me and tell one of them to call the police. Seriously though, he just wanted to know if I would like to take pictures of myself with the eagle, for a small (ha, ha) fee of course. My wife was trembling next to me and grasping my arm like she wanted to cut off its circulation. I thought the idea was cool. He slipped the leather sleeve over my forearm and set the eagle atop it, and my wife and friends began snapping photos of us with a backdrop of the Hungarian Parliament Building. Pictures to send home to Mom. I smiled and felt macho with this huge entity of nature on my appendage. Yes, I was a man, a strong man, and I had this bird symbolic of strength on my arm. I was one with the eagle. Our souls were entwined. It was an extension of me. Then I looked at the eagle’s claws, which wrapped all the way around my forearm (which is pretty healthy in girth, if I do say so myself), and I thought about what eagles for do with those claws. They kill things and rip them to shreds. White-tailed Eagles eat mostly sea fish and cormorants, but depending on the season and how hungry they are, they will eat anything from rabbits to pigeons, snakes, and the hatchlings of other birds. They’ll even eat lambs if they are hungry enough. From the strength with which the bird gripped my arm and the size and sharpness of its talons, I could imagine this raptor, this element of destruction and death, flying into a tree filled with pigeons, its talons slashing and ripping, zeroing in on the fattest of the rookery, gripping and crushing the life out of the bird, bones cracking, blood splattering, feathers flying, and in the same motion, beating its enormous wings, lifting itself up and out of the tree, its gory prize dangling below, headed off to a cliff kilometers away, to share the freshly-killed meal with its hatchlings, the scent of blood and innards driving the chicks into a feeding frenzy.
In Rookery, Traci Brimhall’s first collection of verse, the narrator is, metaphorically speaking, a pigeon, and all of her lovers and male figures in her life are eagles. Brimhall brings to the reading world piercing language and empathic characters. Her poems rip and tear out your guts. They feed your intellect. They stimulate your senses. To the poetry world, Ms. Brimhall is brought in on wings, as if by a Tural.

Review by Stephen Page

[Alicia (PrettyBrownEyeReader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

n this poetry collection, the writer gives 3 definitions of the word, rookery: 1) a colony of rooks 2) a breeding place 3) a crowded tenement house. These definitions are the titles of the 3 sections in which the collection is divided.

The poems contained within this collection are very interesting. Many of the poems in the first section contain the word, aubade in their title. I was not familiar with this word. It means a morning love song/poem. This is a great use of irony because most of those poems are tragic and disturbing. Not love song material.

Other poems in the collection use nature imagery – butterflies, bats, frogs, turtles and other species. Religious imagery is also used in many of the poems via angels and biblical passages.

My favorite poems of the collection are historical. The poem writes a moving poem about the 1911 Triangle Waist Shirt Factory fire that killed 146 people in New York. She also pens a poem about Margaret Garner, an escaped enslaved woman who killed her daughter to prevent her return to slavery. Garner’s story was the inspiration of Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved.

I enjoyed this collection and have read through it several times.

[Shailee · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the suitors arrived, they wore weapons in order to sleep, and I stroked their backs. I will not defend myself. Bees entered me when we kissed, stingers clotted my throat. O harsh, unforgiving kingdom, everyone betrays. Penelope unwove her shroud and stopped looking for sails, uttered his name as she dropped black thread on the floor. But now the bard who once sang of desire will be spared and told to sing about mercy:

“Praise the ruler who wears disguises. Praise the ruler who kills for peace.” Even as we wash blood from the table, I do not regret it. As we toss swords into the arms of olive trees and scatter hawks roosting in helmets, I know this is why we love - so someone will watch us die and carry our body to the place of our burning. Even as they knot the ship's cable and pull our feet from the ground, I am not sorry I tasted such honey.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is luscious, dark, deeply lyrical, like an old magic I recognize from some time before. I cannot get enough of her imagery, her references, the gut punch of glorious wordplay. Prayer To Delay The Apocalypse makes me want to weep with how perfect it is, but every poem in this slim book has impact. If I never read another poet, I think Traci Brimhall would be enough for me.

[shezal · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don't remember how i came across this anthology, but whatever moment of fate that was, it led me to poems that read like prayers, like a revelation. i could go on and on about the beauty of their structure, the vividness of each visual, the intricacies of every verse but in truth, i hold onto this book like something holy, something that unmade me and let me come apart.

[Galene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Traci Brimhall, you’re a G.

[H]

loved the first section especially

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poetry exploring love, infidelity, loss, and desire.

from Aubade with a Broken Neck: "You should see / her in the beginnings of her fear, rushing / at the starless window, her body a dart, / her body the arrow of longing, aimed / as all desperate things are, to crash / not into the object of desire, / but into the darkness behind it."

from Regret with Wildflowers: "Of all my minor regrets, this is the worst- / I let you assure me that desire is like a boy // who throws rocks at a deer decaying in the river. / That innocent. That brutal."

from Nocturne with Clay Horses: "You're afraid to fall asleep because the monsters you find / are the ones you bring with you,"

[Gabriel]

I always liked Traci Brimhall, now I know that I like her even more, Rookery was nothing but a disturbing delight. Urgent, moving poems.

[Erin Lyndal Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Changing my life right now, or at least my writing.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn't crazy about most of the poems, but loved "Aubade with a Broken Neck" and "The Light in the Basement" enough to warrant three stars.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark.

[Amorak Huey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teaching this book again, still, always.

[Ever · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much lovely, potent imagery. A pleasure to read.

[lonner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what great poetry tastes like.

[H]

Quintessential lineage of Laure-Anne Bosselaar.

[Marcene · Rating 5 out of 5]

A captivating book. Brimhall's images evoke both beauty and terror with deft precision.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE this book. Love it. Love Traci Brimhall, love the grief and betrayal that gets brought to bloom in this perfect, compact text. Beautiful poetry.