Kevin Brown, Liturgical
Calendar. Eugene, OR: RESOURCE Publications (An Imprint of Wipf and Stock
), 2014. 100 pages, paper. $14U.S. ISBN
13: 978-1-4982-0375-3.
In his new book, Kevin Brown does not write overtly
religious poems, as the title of the collection, Liturgical Calendar, and of many individual poems would suggest. His
strategy is more cagey—subversive even. He situates his poems squarely in the
everyday world of the present, his lines and stanzas short, images focused
largely on the commonplace. Most of the pieces are written in the first person in
a tone of wry or ironic humor. The language is colloquial, matter-of-fact, occasionally
meditative. Thus the voice of the poet flows along in an easy rhythm, like a
conversation with oneself, mulling over mundane worries, wounds suffered in
childhood, or embarrassing personality flaws not usually confided to friends and
relatives.
But there is more to it. Each poem, either by title
or subtitle, references a sacred event or a saint, leading the reader to
suppose that the poem will be literally about Ash Wednesday or St. Hilarion.
But no, the poem concerns people down the street. And yet, while taking a stroll
in Brown’s neighborhood, the reader is surprised into an encounter with the
Christian universe—where one’s own moral life is implicated. A married couple’s
ordinary supper of spaghetti, bread and wine suggests comparison with the Last
Supper and the Eucharist. Brown reminds the reader that the sacred lurks just
beyond the kitchen—or within it.
He invites the reader to consider the ways in which
a betrayal at the supper table, seemingly confined to such a tiny space and
moment, might have universal significance. It might have to do with Judas and
the reason why Jesus died, something the poet wants the reader to question
rather than saying it himself.
The loss of love is a major subject of Liturgical Calendar. One striking sequence
considers the Easter cycle, opening with “Palm Sunday,” when Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem a week before his death.
In this poem, a man describes retrospectively a young married couple’s happiness,
“celebrating successes/we have not yet
had,” while foretelling disappointment: “ahead of us, only dusk.” In “Maundy
Thursday,” Jesus’s foreknowledge of betrayal is
implicitly compared to a more mundane betrayal, when a husband realizes his
wife will betray him, “a future only I
could foresee.” At the end of this
revelatory supper, the husband sees nothing left “but a pile of plates/in the
sink, pieces/of pasta clinging/to them tenaciously.”
Is the difference in betrayals so vast as to not yield
a valid comparison, or does the poet wish us to realize that betrayal is a
monumental human experience?
“Good Friday” implicitly connects Christ’s crucifixion
to the death of a marriage: “Nothing
left but the suffering”—small words for a large reality. “Holy Saturday” offers
a poignant image of loss in a husband’s cry to his wife who has abandoned him: “I sit in your study, the emptiness echoing
like a tomb.” Finally, “Easter Sunday”
raises hope for the estranged couple, comparing reconciliation to resurrection, in that both
“are made out to be miracles.”
In his “Notes” at the end of the book, Brown
provides a liturgical or Gospel reference to every poem. Some of these notes require
a little extra effort on the reader’s part—well worth it—to understand exactly
what Brown was thinking as regards a Biblical passage or saintly anecdote. One
such poem, “Dry Mouth,” is about loss from a “what if” perspective. A man
reflects on all the times he found himself unable to communicate verbally with
his wife as she wanted; the marriage might have endured if he had found the
words. The Gospel reference is to Jesus curing the deaf mute, a sad admission that
no miracle occurred in this case.
Brown can be openly passionate. “People Said It Was
the Best Show They Had Ever Seen,” which takes place on the Fourth of July,
addresses a woman who finds freedom from her husband’s abuse only in his death. Here Brown reveals deep
empathy with the woman and her suffering.
Liturgical
Calendar is an
accomplished work which can be enjoyed as lightly or as deeply as the reader
wishes to take it.
Brown, a professor at Lee University, has published
two previous books of poetry, A Lexicon
of Lost Words and Exit Lines, as
well as a memoir, Another Way, and a
scholarly study, They Love to Tell the
Stories.
- Nina Tassi has published three books: Urgency Addiction (nonfiction), The Jeremiah Tree, and Antarctic Visions; she is completing a
new collection of poems, Spirit
Ascending.
