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Brandon
Scott Gorrell's heartbreaking poems about contemporary life
show a world where the internet gives an illusion of closeness
and friendship that cannot be fulfilled in reality. In simple
sentences that often read like to-do lists, Gorrell corrals
distress that will linger in readers' minds long after they've
closed the book. The free verse is imbued with an internal
rhythm that builds to a fever pitch before becoming whisper
quiet, and the plain language enhances that sense of rhythm
without any meandering. Don't look for beautiful sentences
in During My Nervous Breakdown; there are few. Gorrell's
truthful, unpretty poems snowball into avalanches of anguish,
leaving readers unsettled.
In "holding
a tiny dixie cup in my hand makes me feel like a giant human
being that can crush things," Gorrell shows readers the effect
that simple, external, mundane things can have on emotions.
"i was in my bedroom silently freaking out while staring at
a computer screen," and "someone sent me a picture of a poster
of a lost dog on a telephone pole in a dark place and i felt
sad" point to a narrator who is so distant from himself that
these disconnected events send him into tailspins. He's so
detached from himself that he "wanted to take a picture of
myself with a sad facial expression and i took three and i
had an angry facial expression in them." Without external
validation, he doesn't even know what emotions he's conveying.
Later he writes, "there was old coffee and a novel and some
cigarettes on my desk and i was intellectual and beautiful."
The protagonist's emotions are ruled by externals. Readers
don't know why he would be freaking out staring at the screen
or why some random lost dog makes him sad, but the title clues
readers in to the narrator's use of props to change his relationship
to the world, to feel strong or sad.
In "today
i empathized with the top of a tower" Gorrell mixes humor,
personification, and hyperbole to show the narrator's inability
to relate to people. "iced soy hazelnut lattes are good, i
want 1,800," he writes. If something is good, perhaps more
of it will assuage the protagonist's ennui. But when he writes
"you are a cube-shaped apartment building/ maintained by a
resident manager," he's expressing his frustration at people
being sanitized and controlled. With the next line, "i am
opening and closing things inside of you," it's obvious that
he's going to break those walls if he can. Buildings and the
trappings of civilization make the character feel stuck and
frustrated, but nature gets him riled and produces the most
violent imagery in the poem: "tomorrow i plan on destroying
the earth/ i will rip out a tectonic plate/ throw it at the
moon." A line like "i want to sleep on a zebra while it gets
eaten by a lion" may sound funny, but it shows the narrator's
desire for a passive but violent death. When he follows that
with "i want to buy a blank panther and take it around the
city on a leash," it's obvious that he's trying to reign in
his attraction to the violence of nature.
Most
of the poems have similar structures, beginning with quiet
statements of fact ("you said i'm going to call you and leave
a message," or "i want to buy a spacecraft") building into
frenzied sentences crammed with emotion, and finishing quietly
and sadly. In fact, the whole collection ends with the word
"whispers."
Because
the language is basic and unadorned, readers may underestimate
the impact of Gorrell's poems until they've sat with the verses
for a bit. But Gorrell's poignant angst will resonate and
resound, bringing them back to read this collection again
and again.
(August,
2009)
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