Book Review
Reviewed by Marvin Harris
Professor Emeritus of English, East Texas Baptist University
Hobson’s Choice
Nathan Brown, Edmond, Greystone Press, 2002.
Nathan Brown has said, “I want my poetry to matter, at least to me. I want to be a part of activating change within a culture that is decaying into a terrifying apathy” (Introduction). In Hobson’s Choice he has done just that as he writes creatively, insightfully, and with refreshing simplicity about religion, social issues and events, fatherhood, childhood memories, and ordinary everyday experiences. Even those who tend to shy away from poetry will find this volume a book to recommend to friends as a “must read.”
Besides piquing one’s interest, the title defines Brown’s angst regarding a compelling urge to be a poet philosopher. Thomas Hobson was a seventeenth century English liveryman who required those who wished to lease a horse to take the one nearest the door, regardless of the horse’s condition; hence, Hobson’s “choice” was no choice at all. Brown concedes that whatever else he may do in life, he experiences a Hobson’s choice to pen his poems, to be a poet prophet. The choice is not his to make. He writes in the Introduction, “I’m sick to death of the postmodern . . . fallout that engulfs my generation. It’s a seemingly terminal condition in which nothing can be allowed to be ‘all that interesting.’ . . . I want my poetry to matter, at least to me. I want to be a part of activating change within a culture that is decaying into a terrifying apathy” (14).
But he struggles with literary authority. A product of an untroubled upbringing in a stable middle-class white family, he is apprehensive about his right to write. He says in “Hobson’s Choice,” the poem that echoes the volume’s title and lists his advantages (“blessings”), “ I have / lost no child / fought no war / committed no crime/ no license / to write.” A too-harsh self-critic, he admits to himself “…gotta write a poem” even if it may not be world shattering; so “ …move on …/ …500 poems / ‘n a few good lines.” In “Rhetoric” Brown freezes in a moment of dread that he may not achieve his soul-wrenching purpose: “I hope in some way / somehow, someday / before the rolls are read / to think of a new thing / and someday say something / for nothing’s already been said.”
The sixty-eight poems in the five sections headed “Carp,” “Chit,” “Din,” “Moot,” and “Rumi” exhibit a wide range of topics and emotional levels. Some are playful, as the enjoyably succinct “Las Vegas: Pair o’ dice/ Lost.” And everyone can relate to the frustrating problem of lost socks in the washing machine. The humorous twist at the end of “Lucky Sock” brings a chuckle: “’I just don’t believe it!’ I heard him say / ‘I JUST threw your matching sock away!’”
Several poems treat fondly of innocent childhood or nostalgic memories of calmer, pleasant days before the 9/11 societal change. He is moved from apathy toward traditional holidays as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas to renewed meaning by his sixteen-month-old daughter in a poem fittingly titled “Revived.” “3 Quarters” relates the touching story of a poor woman who uses her last two dollars from her welfare check to buy the breakfast special then spends the three quarters of change playing the jukebox—Rosemary Clooney, the Beatles, and Sinatra (‘Ol Blue Eyes”). The scrambled eggs and pancakes fed her body; the nostalgic songs fed her soul.
Brown addresses the modern disregard for environmental concerns in “Whispers.” It bears citing in full: “Father Culture / whispers in my ear, / spitting out seed onto concrete / ‘Take it— / the planet was made / for you.’ // Mother Earth / whispers an older story / that reeks of lost truth, / seeps in through pores— / an ancient reminder— / ‘only so much . . .’”
Poems about religion paradoxically evoke a bemused smile mingled with painful regret. Decrying the world’s penchant for war, especially in the Middle East, “The Wailing Wall” reverses the expected stance by having the Wall wail for “my murdered children.” The poems dealing with religion, especially those about the Southern Baptist Convention, are less polite. Satirically, in “All Hayell!” Brown unabashedly reveals his contempt for recent actions of the SBC. The poem begins with a pair of plain-spoken, irreverent couplets:
All hail! The Southern Baptist Convention
O blessed brotherhood of rectal retention
A Christian majority A moral coalition
A liberal purging of all moderation
He continues bemoaning the group’s “defeminization,” “devout duress” to “amass congregations,” shameful behavior to “disprove evolution,” and “infallibration.” To gain their will, they engage in “Consuming the lost in mass conflagration.” No less impiously, “May Day” recalls a religious zealot pulling a black rubber-wheeled cross down I-35 with a sign dogmatically proclaiming that God wants prayer back in school. Brown ends by saying, “and I’m thinkin’— / Jesus didn’t get a wheel.”
Quite striking is Brown’s style, which impresses through its unconventionality at times. Poets seek to convey ideas succinctly, packing expanded meaning into words through connotations, metaphors, similes, imagery, etc. Professor Frank Baxter’s definition of poetry is classic: “Poetry is the attempt of man to put into little much that he has experienced.” That is, a poem compresses expression of what is felt and known. To this end, Brown is especially proficient in the use of metaphor. In the earlier mentioned “Whispers,” for example, much is said about modern culture’s replacing sod with concrete—“spitting out seeds onto concrete” (that does not afford germination). A similar image is that of Jews arriving in the Holy Land where their “tears soak oily pavement / sprouting grace [not grass] through cracks.” The double meaning is powerful. The simile of families sticking together “like day-old-steamed-white-rice” is indelicate, but effectively descriptive. More warming is the memory of a walk through a cool creek and feeling “rich melting chocolate / oozing up between toes” (“Cool, Cloudy”).
Another technique employed by Brown is the use of space and shape to convey meaning—another means of accomplishing succinctness and ideas “rendered into little.” To create the image of a Boeing “whale” opening its doors, Brown says the anxious passengers “wait for the mouth to y a w n.” In “To-From” the poem begins with words crunched together without spaces to suggest the stressful hustle and bustle of frenetic city life, but as the poem progresses, moving the reader to the quieter, unhurried wilderness, the words become discrete with ever-widening spaces until in the middle of the poem, which depicts the wilderness, each line consists of just one word. Then, as the poems moves back to the urban setting, the lines again become long and the words are compressed without spaces, just as is life in a busy city. Again, one can visualize the slow swishing of a cat’s tail simply by the arrangement of the words in “Ben Yehuda Street”:
her
tail
moves
slowly
back
and
forth
Shape is also employed to good advantage in “Jericho” by gradual increasing line length from short to long to suggest a descent—as when one goes “down to Jericho.”
Brown also utilizes conventional forms as well, notably the haiku and even the most difficult villanelle, which he cleverly titles “The Villainous Nelle.” His forte, however, is in unrestrained form, powerful metaphors, compelling imagery, and evocative space and shape.
Some who read modern poetry question whether the poems are truly poetry or mere prose arranged to suggest verse. Poems they are, but a distinction must be made between verse and poetry. The former is a structure; the latter is a quality (whether in verse or prose), and a poem may be either. Some poems are devoid of any poetry, while some prose is replete with poetry. Brown’s Hobson’s Choice is packed with pure poetry.
The poems are poetry, not mere verse.
Hobson’s Choice is a remarkable first book of poetry for this minister, college professor, entertainer, musician, and recording artist. Surely more superb works are to come from his creative mind.
