11th Annual Juried Reading: Garret J. Brown

11th Annual Juried Reading Finalist

Garrett J. Brown of Chicago, Illinois

Jorie Graham Say:
"Opposition moves with unerring pacing from general statement and geography and history, to the almost humorous gesture (the green-skinned gondoliers / smoothly rowing from pier to alien pier)to very intimate thinking, thinking which is emotionally nuanced (what we wish to see presents us from seeing/what is) to arrive finally at the even more narrowed, telescoping inwardness of the last 3 stanzas. The images are appropriate and beautiful, the use of metaphor in full command. It and "The Learn'd Astronomer" are my favorites. Brown exhibits,(in addition to a command of form), intelligence, deep heartfulness and no fear of learnedness. "

BIO: Garrett J. Brown's poems have appeared in various journals including The Ledge, Pif Magazine and the Midwest Poetry Review. In 2000, he won a Creative Writing Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he graduated with his MFA in Creative Writing. His book-length manuscript, Manna Sifting, was runner-up in the 2003 Maryland Emerging Voices competition. He is currently teaching writing at University of Illinois at Chicago, where he is pursuing his PhD. Garrett's chapbook, Panning the Sky, is available from Pudding House Publications.

OPPOSITION
August 27, 2003

     Metaphor is the frayed thread that connects what we desire with what merely exists.
     Tony Rothman

Even before squinting through a telescope,
Percival Lowell revealed what he was hoping

to see: exquisite web of channels, evidence
of a vast Venice etched into the rusty disk

of Mars. Did he dream of green-skinned gondoliers
smoothly rowing from pier to alien pier,

soothing their linear canali with Martian song?
Skeptical scientists knew Lowell was wrong;

what we wish to see prevents us from seeing
what is.

          Don't we all wish to draft perfect
          lines, envision a complete Cathedral
          instead of quarrying the awkward
          facts, imperfect stones resisting
          the symmetry of the church wall?

Tonight, closer than it will ever be,

I watch the planet from my window and shed
Lowell's imagined world for the frayed thread

of metaphor. Iron rusting on the surface, the same
element that warms the pigment in our veins: Mars,

a speck of blood in the cold, impenetrable night.