{"id":7960,"date":"2023-09-21T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=7960"},"modified":"2023-09-21T11:00:52","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T11:00:52","slug":"review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: All Bird: Brandi George\u2019s The Nameless"},"content":{"rendered":"
Review of\u00a0<\/em>The Nameless,\u00a0by Brandi George.\u00a0<\/em>\nKernpunkt Press, August 2023, 199 pages, $18.00<\/a><\/em>\nReview by James Brock.<\/em><\/pre>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
The late Dean Young famously instructs poets, \u201cWe are making birds not birdcages,\u201d in The Art of Recklessness<\/em>, expressing a gravity-defying Warner Brothers Cartoons ethos and New York School surrealism. Young committed to those ideas since his days as a graduate student (and one year as a nursing student) at Indiana University, some forty years ago. His ideas about recklessness broaden the scope of poetry, embracing creative processes that are truly disruptive, chaotic, comedic, and thrilling. (Anne Carson, Thylias Moss, and Denise Duhamel were busy with their own poetic larcenies those days as well.)<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, there lived a punk-goth farm girl, haling from Ovid, Michigan, with living visitations from faery tale creatures and Old Testament demons; a Lady Gaga little monster who survived exorcisms and sexual abuse and suicide; a love-wrecked and love-worn lovechild of Walt Whitman and Thumbelina; and, eventually, a professor and Ashtanga practitioner. She would write unlikely long books of poetry, improbably to have them published. And that poet, Brandi George, has now gifted us with an incredibly demanding, rewarding, pleasurable, harrowing, and funny book of poetry, The Nameless<\/em>. It is a monumental book that is all bird.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Part bildungsroman, part memoir, part enfevered vision, part nature study of fungi, and so, so much more, The Nameless<\/em> is also the work of a serious, careful versifier, one whose mastery of iambic meter is as light and feathery as hydrae. It is also a book that runs some 200 pages, a visionary accomplishment published by Kernpunkt Press\u2014a press that must be praised for its faith in the most unlikely.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Structurally, The Nameless<\/em> operates ostensibly as a memoir, divided into two sections, and subdivided into short, individual chapters. And while one is to distrust the autobiographical in poetry as being merely factual, clearly the effort here by George is to construct a poetic record of her life. The speaker in her book is self-identified as \u201cWe\u201d\u2014and while that first appears to be a nod toward a gender-neutral self-naming, the \u201cwe\u201d who speaks is a dissembling of voices, polyphonic, amorphous, and morphing. This expansive idea of self, certainly Whitman-like, finds its operative metaphor in the mushroom, in fungi. Yes, inside the pleats of the cap of a mushroom are ungendered spores, where 10,000 individuals can fit on a pinhead, and a single fungus constitutes the largest organism on earth, covering an expanse of over four square miles.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
George\u2019s \u201cWe\u201d constitutes a self that is wracked with auditory and visual hallucinations, an identity we might consider as post-structurally fractured or profoundly schizophrenic, but one that becomes a representation of the poet, a being who is something of a receiver, without the usual filters, who hears the language of air and death in everything and who must then sing.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
The book begins with death, where We, as a child, is the victim of sexual molestation\u2014her parents instruct her to forget it\u2014and, from that moment, death\u2019s spores enter We\u2019s body:<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 so now when we\ncompletely forget\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 it Happened\n\nthe Thing forms\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a fairy ring\ninside our body\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now Death\n\nlives inside us\n\n<\/pre>\n
Invariably, then, Death attends, embodies, and accompanies We through the book\u2014a fact of her life that she has long been taught to ignore and deny. And, of course, in Ovid, death is everywhere, within and without, but with the promise of change and metamorphosis. For We, this means enduring an exorcism at her parents\u2019 behest, the parents convinced their adolescent daughter is possessed by demons. They burn her poems. The irony, it seems, is that We is indeed possessed, but by Death in all its recombinant manifestations.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
The book chapters are often prefaced by George\u2019s brilliantly fractured tales of Thumbelina dying a new death with each iteration. We clearly identifies with Thumbelina\u2014the strangest of Hans Christian Andersen\u2019s fairy tales\u2014whose queer desires and chaotic imaginings are continually corrected by her elders. George\u2019s Thumbelina is \u201cgenderless, many-faced, guiltless, green, and as mysterious as twilight,\u201d a runaway spirit who meets death recklessly, fully, casually, and intentionally.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
And in this large book, there are abundant touchstones for We beyond Thumbelina: Kurt Cobain, tarot cards, success and the po-biz, and even animal husbandry. This is a poet\u2019s memoir, after all, a testimony of the empathetic spirit, and here, with death living inside her, We\u2019s empathy is almost debilitating. She feels too much (and this seems to be her chief sin, at least by her family\u2019s reckoning). For instance, We recounts her work at a dairy farm, where her job is to separate the male calves from the female calves, after which the baby bulls will be sold for veal:<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
back in the barn we try to console the new calf\nname him \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Bocephus \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0after Hank \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0but without his mother\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 he\u2019s petrified\ntrembling \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0we hold him to our chest like a child\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 his grief is so deep we can feel it \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0glacial \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0nothing will ever\nabsolve us of this<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
As much as We disassociates herself from her family, from middle-America banality, and from the grind of capitalism, she is inescapably complicit. Where others in her family and community routinely deny responsibility, she feels it keenly\u2014it is the death in her. The poet\u2019s task, it seems, is to receive everything, to name it, to own it.<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Even so, much of the book is doomful, doleful love poetry, a tribute to We\u2019s beloved Annette, an equally wild spirit (and later to We\u2019s husband Michael, who co-authors several poems in the book). Here, the poetry is tender:<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
In the backyard we practice\nflipping our hair\nShe-Ra mermaid rock star\nit\u2019s our thing hair \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0then eyes then\n\nwill we ever be beautiful?\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 our longing for beauty is\ncrush of petals down our shirt\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 leaves under our feet\ndandelion heads on the sidewalk\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 sunburn like a hand<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
So, amid all the chaos, the disorientation of hallucinations, and the broken wheel that is the self, George\u2019s reckless poetry continually finds its purchase in these fleeting moments. This unguarded work seems the very product of Muriel Rukeyser\u2019s question: \u201cWhat would happen if one woman told the truth of her life?\u201d The world that Brandi George has split open contains all the invisible names of death, all the fecund beauty we long for, and a billion seeds that will germinate from the dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Review of\u00a0The Nameless,\u00a0by Brandi George.\u00a0 Kernpunkt Press, August 2023, 199 pages, $18.00 Review by James Brock. The late Dean Young famously instructs poets, \u201cWe are making birds not birdcages,\u201d in The Art of Recklessness, expressing a gravity-defying Warner Brothers Cartoons ethos and New York School surrealism. Young committed to those ideas since his days as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":7972,"template":"","categories":[9,139,49,1569],"tags":[889,6,347,1926,1301,1927,1928,1929],"class_list":["post-7960","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","category-literary-features","category-reviews","tag-aquifer","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-book-review","tag-brandi-george","tag-james-brock","tag-poem","tag-poetry-collection","tag-the-nameless"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nReview: All Bird: Brandi George\u2019s The Nameless - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Review: All Bird: Brandi George\u2019s The Nameless - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Review of\u00a0The Nameless,\u00a0by Brandi George.\u00a0 Kernpunkt Press, August 2023, 199 pages, $18.00 Review by James Brock. The late Dean Young famously instructs poets, \u201cWe are making birds not birdcages,\u201d in The Art of Recklessness, expressing a gravity-defying Warner Brothers Cartoons ethos and New York School surrealism. Young committed to those ideas since his days as […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2023\/09\/TFR-Social-Media-Posts-10.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\\\/\",\"name\":\"Review: All Bird: Brandi George\u2019s The Nameless - The Florida Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/43\\\/2023\\\/09\\\/TFR-Social-Media-Posts-10.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-09-21T11:00:52+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/43\\\/2023\\\/09\\\/TFR-Social-Media-Posts-10.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/sites\\\/43\\\/2023\\\/09\\\/TFR-Social-Media-Posts-10.png\",\"width\":1080,\"height\":1080},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Review: All Bird: Brandi George\u2019s The Nameless\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Florida Review\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Review: All Bird: Brandi George\u2019s The Nameless - The Florida Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Review: All Bird: Brandi George\u2019s The Nameless - The Florida Review","og_description":"Review of\u00a0The Nameless,\u00a0by Brandi George.\u00a0 Kernpunkt Press, August 2023, 199 pages, $18.00 Review by James Brock. The late Dean Young famously instructs poets, \u201cWe are making birds not birdcages,\u201d in The Art of Recklessness, expressing a gravity-defying Warner Brothers Cartoons ethos and New York School surrealism. Young committed to those ideas since his days as […]","og_url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/","og_site_name":"The Florida Review","og_image":[{"width":1080,"height":1080,"url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2023\/09\/TFR-Social-Media-Posts-10.png","type":"image\/png"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/","url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/","name":"Review: All Bird: Brandi George\u2019s The Nameless - The Florida Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2023\/09\/TFR-Social-Media-Posts-10.png","datePublished":"2023-09-21T11:00:52+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2023\/09\/TFR-Social-Media-Posts-10.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2023\/09\/TFR-Social-Media-Posts-10.png","width":1080,"height":1080},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-all-bird-brandi-georges-the-nameless\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Review: All Bird: Brandi George\u2019s The Nameless"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/","name":"The Florida Review","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/7960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/7960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}