A Capella Poetry Project: Di Brandt

Di Brandt is a Canadian woman that was born into a conservative Mennonite family in 1952. She was born in Winkler, Manitoba, in a small community that held tight Christian beliefs and was incredibly critical of the outside world. Later in her life, however, she moved to Winnipeg, causing her family to chastise her for becoming “one with the world” instead of “living in the world, but not of it,” one of the major precepts of her church. Upon moving into a more diverse community, Brandt experiences liberal ideas and values that challenge her previous understanding of life. She is well known for writing “Canadian” literature—literature about maternity and nature—and has produced several volumes of poetry, such as questions I asked my mother, Agnes in the Sky, and mother not mother. Her writings branch out from the reserved notion of conservative Mennonites and address highly controversial feelings and experiences otherwise not openly expressed in the mainstream community. “Nonresistance, or love Mennonite style” is a poem addressing some of the aforementioned “forbidden” feelings that Brandt experienced as a child. Within the first few lines, she criticizes one of the Biblical values, “turning the other cheek,” by questioning what to do in certain situations that could demoralize an individual. Her satirical stance continues, almost into a blasphemous state, as she mentions inappropriate feelings towards family members and even towards themselves, such as how her lips tingle when she kisses her uncle and how her father beats her mother. By mentioning these topics, she strongly critiques the morality within nonresistance and pacifism from her new point of view of being “in the world.” I share a similarity with Di Brandt in regards to my personal opinion on my own culture. In a biography written by Donna Bailey Nurse, a contributor to the Quill & Quire magazine, Di says “I spent so much time writing, fighting, against my Mennonite inheritance and the restrictions it puts on women and its internal contradictions.” In the same way, I spent much of my life protesting my African American heritage, at times even rejecting it. In addition, my childhood also shaped my opinion of my culture. As my father often rejected me from his community by repeatedly telling me that I was never “good enough” or “Black enough,” I found myself spending a lot of time and energy loathing myself and the community that I was indefinitely tied to. Such frustrations are illustrated within my imitation of “Nonresistance, or love Mennonite style.”

Smile & Pretend

nod your head obediently & smile when
the white man walks past your house with
his feet trampling over the tulips & lilies
you spent all summer planting with your
great-grandmother who’s pretending she’s not dying
& honestly, you’re dying, too, but
none of that matters ‘cause you’re laughing too much
‘cause you’re still in one piece &
the teachers think that seems good enough
& they’re white & you’re not so
you smile & pretend you don’t feel
your skin tingling as the air hits that
newly open wound you received from
the black kids & the spit you were gifted with
to use as antiseptic to clean out all that white
puss you’ve got coming out of your flesh
& speaking of your skin you best remember
you’re not black enough even though you’re
the darkest one in the entire house &
no matter how much your mom tans
she isn’t going to get darker than the Jews
down the road & you wonder why daddy
even picked mama & you think that’s probably
why mama always says No! No! when you mention him
so you try not to & you mention God since
He’s an eternal papa & not gonna die like you
except for that one time on the cross when
He died for everybody and was stabbed in the hands
& you got stabbed in the hands too
& the heart & you pretend to be Jesus for a moment
& ask Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani &
you get no response but God is watching
so nod your head obediently & smile

The next poem, beginning with the line “the great dark rush of mothering,” addresses Brandt’s concerns about maternity. Within her home, her father acted as an overbearing figure with an almost dictator-like authority. Growing up, the only text she was allowed to read was the Bible, allowing him to act as a tyrant without bonds. She was afraid to publish her poetry and waited until after her father died before she finally released any of her works. Considering that her mother was often beat, this led Brandt to question the purpose of a mother overall. After aging, the author entered into a short marriage before divorcing her husband and acting as a single mother. These experiences allowed her to reflect about maternity and the female sexuality, leading to the creation of this piece. In the poem, she reflects on the feelings behind being a mother and all the strength it takes, while meanwhile using language that contrasts from the stereotypical view of motherhood. Rather than embracing the beauty behind hosting children, she writes lines including, “slit open your belly, trampled / your sheets, / wanting to be gone.” As the poem is written in couplets, the images within each couplet stand alone with each section focusing on a different aspect of the biological experience. These images include bonding with the children, becoming protective of them, and letting them go. Though this is a natural experience of being a parent, the tone of the poem is dark, thus separating it from other works about being a single mother. In addition, Brandt includes another characteristic of her “Canadian” poetry by inserting nature. I chose this poem to analyze and to include in the discussion because I hold another connection with the poet. My mother was a single parent, and so often I wondered if she felt as if I was a parasite because I am solely reliant on her for everything. I also feel guilty at times because as I attend college, I am leaving her alone. My mother was raised with divorced parents and she did not stay in one home throughout her childhood. She began her life with her great-grandmother and she was visited by her grandmother, who she mistook as her mother; and her mother, who she mistook as her sister. Upon reaching her teenage years, she moved in with her mother and abusive stepfather who would often would make sexual advances towards her. After witnessing her step-father attack her mother when being addressed about the issue, my mother ran away from home and went to her father’s. Her step-mother did not like her, either, and maliciously threw objects at her, intending to injure my mother. With such a tumultuous childhood, my mother attempted to protect me by sheltering me. Rather than write about my mother’s experience with parenting, my imitation focuses on my mother’s childhood and her experience aging.

the vast, dark valley of childhood,
the false excitement in it,

the confusion, the loss, and the anticipation
as it sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks out youth.

your hands reach out to grab what’s left,
fingers trembling

hesitant to go back – hopping out
the frying pan & into the fire,

pushed on your back, dirtied
your sheets,

wanting to move on.

the color children see most often
is white,

holding on to it, with the snow,
in the air, in the sky,

in your eyes, pupils narrowing into slits, heart
pumping, almost bursting into:

tears, screams, every
indicator of terror,

pieces of yourself because you
can’t stay still,

the family’s a teapot,
whistling before its departure

when all it needed was
to blow off steam,

to be poured out,
to be released.

The last poem differs greatly from the other two poems, but goes back to the original theme of disliking childhood from her conservative Mennonite perspective and implements both her cross-cultural understandings and her appreciation in nature after moving to Winnipeg. This combination is something she calls “Ecopoetic.” It does not have a title, but it begins with the line “when I was five.” The premise of the poem consists of the speaker, which I assume is Brandt, reflecting on a time when she was five and thinking that heaven existed in her barn. This is actually a more relaxing poem, and so for an imitation, it was a little more difficult to personalize, but it is based off a misinterpretation, just as many of Brandt’s poems are misinterpretations and alternative understandings of speaking.

when I was twelve I thought the world was
ending with the school year and burned into
my skin with the rays of summer and the fresh
winds of change along with the freedom of not
having a home to call my own like Annie
an orphan without a church home but God is
in the wind like the colors from Pocahontas or
at least that’s what I thought when I saw my mother
and her smiling face and blowing Cherokee hair
smothering her face like the congested smoke of
the polluted air she breathed in from the cigarettes
& I coughed up and ejected the last air I could
before inhaling the peace pipe of carcinogens
through second hand smoke & survivors as
I remembered that the end is the beginning &
suddenly I felt sweat running down my face
like it would if I was already in Hell &
Chicago in the middle of summer burned my skin
like the end of the world and that homeless shelter
kept me cool.

In conclusion, Di Brandt writes poetry that offers an alternative interpretation of common experiences and circumstances such as childhood and motherhood, allowing her to create bridges from her personal life to the general understanding. She begins in the first poem by addressing the cultural boundaries that she felt were either suffocating or unnecessary and writes about them in a satirical manner, thus criticizing her extremely conservative Mennonite childhood. My poem compares by chastising the American culture and the boundaries that are not supposed to be crossed as both a child and an African-American. I also address similar topics that Brandt does, such as tension between the family and all together. In the second poem, she attempts to cross borders by writing about motherhood in an unconventional manner. By escaping the stereotype, Brandt tries to bring another perspective by distorting the traditional views regarding maternity and brings her experience from being a single mother with a broken family. My imitation includes my mother's experience of a broken childhood, and expands on the idea of not only the delights of childhood, but also the despairs. Finally, the Canadian poet reflects on her new perspective as a Mennonite by introducing a greater emphasis on nature, but at the same time reminisces on a fallacy she had as a child on a single moment she had in a barn. My imitation includes a single moment I had during childhood in which I also integrate nature but emphasize the fallacy I had in regards to having a home and what it meant to be without a place to lay my head to call my own but still having a place overall.

Sources:

Foo, Alexis. "Clichés And Landscapes." Canadian Literature 212 (2012): 155-156. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.

Pell, Barbara. "Di Brandt's World." Canadian Literature 197 (2008): 119-120. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.

Stark, Leslie. "Writing In The Dark." Canadian Literature 186 (2005): 187-188. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.

Links: 

http://www.quillandquire.com/authors/profile.cfm?article_id=6129 

http://www.brocku.ca/canadianwomenpoets/Brandt.htm

http://www.ecclectica.ca/issues/2007/3/brandt.asp