8/10/2019 '50-50' reviewed by Susan M. Schultz

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H

EAT

S U

SAN

SC H

ULTZ

Pam

Brorvn,

50-50

Little

Esther,

1997,ISBN

0

646

32225

7

Pam

Brown's

new

book

of

poems

ends

in

Paris,

or

rather

her

mental

image

of Paris,

appropriate

for

a

poet

so

obsessed

with

American

modernism

and

postmodernism.

Paris

seems

preferable

to

Sydney

(or

the

Blue Mountains,

where

Brown

is

reading

Alice

Notley,

an American

who

lives in

Paris)

as a site

for

poetry:

&, unlike

the

sealed

rtirgy

tunnels

of

Sydney,

Paris

is

anatural

as

a

location

-

the Me[o

the

catacombs

&

the sewers

just,

always,

almost

surfacing.

what

was

I

to

make

of

the fact

that

last August,

as

I

finished

reading

Brown

reading

Nodey

and

imagining

Paris,

I turned

on my

television

only

to

get

the first reports

that Lady

Di

had been

in

an automobile

accident

in

a

Paris

tunnel? Surely

nothing

more

than

coincidence

rules

the reading

of

books

amid

intrusions

of

the

'real'

that

sometimes

emulate

poetry's

fictions.

( what's

this

stuff/

for

anyway-/

this

whacky

genie,/

tiris

poefry?/

In

a

fiction,/

laxn/

&

shamble

off :

seven Days). yet

Brown's

book

is

full of the

providence that comes

of

coincidence,

and especially

out

of the

odd

conjunctions

of random

events

and

the

meditations

that

accrue

because---or

in

spite

of-them.

Her

school

of

poetry,

if

one

can

call it

that,

might

be described

as'narrative

imagismi

an

amalgam

of

the

modernists'

accentuation

of the image

and a

postnodern

talkiness

that is

itself

the

basis for

a

curriculum.

The headnote

to

the book's

first

poem,

Twitching,

comes

from

the Language

poet,

Charles

Bernstein:

I/

learned

to

read

by

watching

/

Wheet

oJ hrtune

when

I

was/

a baby.

The

punning

word

fortune

(and

its

opposite

number,

misfortune)

is

the

basis

for

Brown's

poetics,

as

it

is, in

a different

way,

for

Bernstein's.

The

title,

50-50, is

a

reference

to chance,

or a chance

reference.

My

reading

of

the

book

in

the

context

of

Lady Di's

accident

thus

seems,

if

not

*r-

8/10/2019 '50-50' reviewed by Susan M. Schultz

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VIEWS & REVIEWS

determined, then

at

least

part

of Brown's

program-the

world

of

the

book

becomes a

book that

describes the

worldt

randomness.

If Brown

writes about

Paris

from

the

perspective

of the

Blue

Mountains,

it

may be

because she

is

very much

a

ciry

poet, not

a countsT

one;

she

prefers

the

city's

grubbiness

to

what she

terms

'nature's/

barbarism

( k

Ultimo ).

Among the Moderns,

then, she

sides

more

with

Mina Loy, the

last

years

of

whose

life

were

spent

among

the

poor

in

New York City,

than

with the organizing

manias of

Pound,

Williams

and

Cornell.

So,

in Not

Myrna,

Minai she

writes:

in

dream you

mumble

Mina,

modernism's a

wasm

Ezra' s cantankerous

scrapbooks

William

Williams'

stamina

Joe

Cornell's

boxes

my true

environment

is

a

dust bin

new maps for Mina

Elsewhere,

in

Abstract

Happinessf Brown,

who is

a

librarian,

asks

how

a

reader

can

concentrate

on the

New Formalists

with

the

case-moths/

a-chomping/

through

the

ground

covers?

[n

First

Things Firsti

she

addresses

a

friend in a

letter:

Dear

K. I'm reading/

dense

U.S.

poetry/

still

beside/ the

sea

which has/ no influence//

the

worst,/ in this

instance,/

is merely a

congestion/ of

pleasure-parachutists/

falling

through/

that colourful

sky/

over a

contaminated

tide.

And, in

Prospectsi she considers

her

ambitions

in the

light of R. Mutt,

namely

the

signature

found on the

famous

urinal

of

Marcel

Duchamps.

These,

and

other,

examples

reveal

a

poet

who

opposes

the statement

she

includes

in

Twitching :

Art

is

mostly/

showing

offl

the

cleverest/

decoration. Brown's

poetry

is decorative

only

in the sense

that it

catalogues

the

images that

make up the

poet's

world;

to

call it

anti-

decorative, at

least

in

an aesthetic

sense,

might

be

more appropriate.

Some

readers

may

find

fault with

the

fact

that

Brown's urban

landscapes

are

more

interior than

actual, but

I do

not

number

myself

among

them.

This is

not

to

say

there

are

no

politics

in

Brown's

work.

As

an

American

I

am

perhaps

predisposed

to notice the

American content of

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H EAT

Brown's

poems;

as

a

resident

of America's

50th

state,

and

more

specifically

of

oahu,

a tiny

island

some five

hours

fly-S

time

for

the

U.S.

continent

and

best

known

there

as a tourist

destination,

I

am

also

drawn

to Brown's

treatrnent

of

postcolonial

postmodernity. Mwa

vee

is,

to

my

mind,

one

of

the strongest

poems

in

this

collection.

Brown's

collage

method

works

well

with

the

political

content

of

the

poem,

about

a

pacific

island

where

American

and French

imperialism

meet

the

tourist

63ds-

and where

the

indigenous

people

can be

altogether

overlooked,

forgotten.

Here

Brown

may

have

learned

from

her

friend,

Adam

Aitken,

an

especially

acute

observer

of the

postcolonial

Pacific;

like

him,

she

writes

with

irony

and

with

lyricism,

a

difficult

combination.

A

close-

reading

of

one

passage

reveals

the

many

levels

of critique

Brown

is

leveling:

across

in

sydney

armchair

agitators

continue

.

slinging

off

against

the

french

ignoring

american

revelations

of

secret

pacific

tests

as late

as 1991

&

radiation

experimenls'-

furtively

feeding

selected

citizens

plutonium

The

passage

further

explores

the historical

backdrop

of

world

War

II,

which

inspired

good

feeling

between

citizens

of

the island

and

American

soldiers,

especially

black

Americans

(and

here

what

is

sometimes

termed

the

postcolonial

experience

of blacks

in

America

becomes

evident).

The

irony

of

historical

good

feeling

as

a backdrop

for

recent

secret

nuclear

testing

is

further

embittered

by

descriptions

of the

sea/

in

which

poodles

swim/ with

madames

who

don't/

but

float

with

kickboards/

flippers

goggles

bathing

caps/

like

children

and

of

the

lushness

of

the

vegetation.

This

perverse combination

of

political

and

cultural

imperialisms

(where

the

kanake/

don't

perform/

commercially,

doubtless

in

self-defense)

is

the

marker

of

a successfully/

colonisld

island.

One

of Brown's

major

accomplishments

in

this

book

is to

think

through

the images

of

the

world

without

colonizing

or in

any

way

appopriating

them.

This is

no

small feat.

200