Gary Brower’s two-part collection is marked by unique phrasing that highlights memory, loss and determination. The book, recalling 1940’s – ‘50’s society, opens with an autobiographical tribute to his polio-stricken mother who, despite crutches, courageously raises her son in financially trying times in small town, northern Missouri – close to the “Land of Plows” (p30, line 9). Additionally, the poems reconstruct memory in moving narrative detail, touching on the culture of place, as well as extended (though often distant) family, abandonment by his biological father. Reading Brower’s heartfelt depictions, you feel the poverty of childhood, the admiration of a struggling mother, the mysterious movements of others, each frankly admitted in the poetic, mature voice looking back on a time when “life was cheap, / labor even cheaper” (16, lines 33-34).
His Missouri home offers conflicting religious options. The “Rooming House” situated in this churchy social context provided “[not] a vision of Hell / just the only kind of Heaven available, / warmth in a season where life / turned cold, lonely in basement solitude” (15, lines 17 – 20). Not overtly vitriolic, nonetheless, the poet remembers that “the preacher’s harangues were always / the same” (28, ln 23). The hypocrisy of a preacher is contrasted with the moral steadfastness of grandfather who, like the oft-referenced Resurrection, never returned, and “God never said a word” (29, ln 10). Brower remembers a place where even in parades “preachers rode in cars that carried / Divine Truth in the trunk’ (45, lines 23 -24).
A very moving poem recalls the memory of chopping a Christmas tree with grandfather, tracing “through the history of conifers” (22, ln 17). The same memory is brutally contrasted by the traumatic witnessing of his grandfather’s heart attack on the drive home: “my seven years unraveled, / alone with death for the first time, / — holding the [emergency hand] brake / with all my childhood / as if it could stop death” (22, lines 28 -32).
Despite the conflicted, painful nostalgia, Escaping the End of the World is satisfying, presenting narrative details without being cumbersome, cinematic but not melodramatic. It is a corrective vision midst the mystery of a sometimes confused, albeit determined, childhood in a place no longer realized. Brower’s collection does what poetry does best: clarify a vision, while paying tribute, honorably forgiving a past.
Part II continues and intensifies the tribute. Offering glimpses of the poet’s adult life, Part II opens with the memory of his wife’s death. This poem is followed by poems recalling the deaths of other relatives, while forming a new life in New Mexico. The death and subsequent changes are mingled with striking references to New Mexico’s landscape where the poet sees his late wife’s “ashes scattered here, / still floating among the flowering cholla, / blooming chamisa, / yellow puffs of rabbit brush” (69, lines 9-12).
In “For My Grandchildren, When They Find Me” the poet tells his grandchildren: “I have built this house of words / where my simple advice / will sleep like an old dog / in front of the fireplace / till you wake it and it looks up, / licks your hand” (72, lines 6-11). We also see the poet at the bedside of his dying father whose “body is like a pet put to sleep / after biting its master” (74, lines 12-13). This drama foregrounds the subsequent surprising discovery of his father’s wooden music box that, despite its years, plays the misunderstood tune China Nights – a souvenir from the war in Korea (75 -76). The deaths of the formative adults of his life cause the poet to seek respite in nature. His dark hymn “Snow Moon Through Clouds” leaves us hearing “the howl / of a coyote / who has lost / the moon” (81, lines 21-24). Brower’s collection concludes with the title poem: “Escaping the End of the World” – a defiant, dystopic vision, ironically paying tribute to all that is mortal, tenuous and unforgettable
Reviewed by Ken Hada, Ada, Oklahoma
G.L Brower, Escaping the End of the World: Poems. Cheyenne, OK: Village Books Press, 2017. ISBN: 9781936923175