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Brockwell's unfettered curiosity and his sensitivity are commendable.
The Real Made Up
by Stephen Brockwell
Misfit / ECW, 2007
Read by Jesse Patrick Ferguson
Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell's fourth collection, The Real Made Up, is formally diverse. Its split personalities lead it from conservative to avant-garde poetics: a free-ranging spirit that is uncommon in Canadian poetry. The roughly 100 pages of short and medium-length poems can be divided into four general types: standard lyrics; a series of "wisdom poems" centering on a character named Karikura, which evoke the poetic traditions of China and Japan; experimental "randomization" and machine-recognition poems; and conventional dramatic monologues.
The collection's strongest poems fall under the first category, in which Brockwell turns his curiosity, playfulness and sound craft to memorable lyric effect. "Ingredients for Certain Poems by Al Purdy," for example, makes good use of humour -- "Wild Ameliasburg grapes / crushed by two hundred pounds of fifty-year-old Al" -- but is also carefully researched, citing various technical procedures for the crafting of spirits, beer and wine. This and other poems like "helium" delight in the minute or obscure details of science and culture, and they sometimes exploit the musical potential of unusual diction with a daring that might make even John Donne chuckle.
The weakest poems fall under the dramatic monologue category, a sub-genre made famous by Robert Browning. Certain of Brockwell's monologues do engage by means of unusual phrasing and strong rhythms -- see "Corporal Jensen's Afghan Rug" -- but others lack the richness of sound field and/or density of poetic device found in the collection's lyrics. Some monologues such as "Mark Bradely's Wife" and "Nicole's Children's Happiness" come very close to plain speech, or are narrowly saved by a semantically ambiguous turn of phrasing toward the poems' end.
Perhaps inevitably with a text of such wide technical and tonal span, each reader will prefer different poems, but in any case, Brockwell's unfettered curiosity and his sensitivity are commendable. It is rare to encounter a poet who is as interested in experimentation as in engaging with the tradition, is as comfortable "making it new" as writing "what oft was thought be ne'er so well express'd."
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