Image credit: Milkweed Editions
I have mixed feelings about this poetry collection. On one hand, it addresses a hugely consequential yet underrepresented issue in our society by speaking plainly about opioid addiction. It was selected by Ada Límon, who I, of course, respect deeply. The book has a succinct coldness represented both formally and by the dedicated repetition of wintry motifs, such as snow, which resonates with my aesthetic values. On the other hand, reading the interview and realizing that Brewer’s own experience with opioids is limited to well-monitored, as-prescribed use only creates an ethical and artistic challenge for me.
There is a clear sense that Brewer is assuming the ‘personas’ of drug-using individuals in his community, but the actual relationship of the poet to the people he is claiming and rendering the experience of is murky— are these people friends? Are they family members? Are they people he sees in grocery store parking lots and chooses to imagine the lives of? Are they childhood acquaintances whose overdose stories reach Brewer through Facebook or word of mouth? I read the interview when I was very close to the end of the collection, but at that point, it only confirmed what I already felt— that these were not his experiences. It’s very clear from the way the poems are written that they were not written by someone with a present or even recently past drug issue. The interviewer and Brewer both talked about a dreaminess that is apparently present throughout the collection, but the presence of cause and effect is too direct and rational for me to really agree with their idea of dreaminess. The poems lack a surreality and disconnection that seems to me to be essential to any narrative involving drug abuse.
As someone who has experienced periods of drug abuse and also witnessed the substance abuse of close friends and family members, I can’t help but think that representing the experiences in this book from a perspective that isn’t first-person would be as effective, if not moreso, and more ethical. Drug abuse isn’t only disturbing to the people it affects directly; it is a clear and present danger to all who witness it. That element of witnessing is very absent from this collection, and I think that undermines the project at hand. All that matters is that these stories are told, it doesn’t need to be from a drug-addict ‘persona’ to be moving. In my opinion, highlighting the presence of an observer, and the contrast between one who lives and one who witnesses, creates a more complex psychic environment. For example, “I watched him swing a hammer into his brother’s fingers (and then they walked to the ER to score pills)” is just as affecting, if not more so, than “I swung a hammer into my brother’s fingers (and then we walked to the ER to score pills).”
On a larger craft note, regarding the book’s construction as a whole, I was really affected by how the collection acknowledged only one season (my favorite season); this made me ask if this collection was written in only one season, or if winter poems from a larger time span were selected intentionally. As someone who has trouble viewing her work as connected across time, it made me wonder what a book of poetry written entirely in one season would look like, and if this was a practical way for me to incorporate timeframe and seasonality into my work. Would this approach be effective for me? I also really loved the titles of many of the poems, the way that they played with religious notions like psalms and were revisited during various points in the cycle (overdose, relapse, recovery).