“A stirring exploration of trauma and healing … The collection’s greatest strength is the author’s wrenching honesty; it takes courage to reveal the realities of psychic pain, and these poems are braver than most in that regard." - Kirkus Reviews
“Powerful and moving...Constructed in a vivid, free style verse, Brown's poems bleed anguish and heartbreak and his feelings of desperation and powerlessness show the reality of mental illness.” - The Prairies Book Review
“Each piece speaks of the fragility of emotions, relationships, life influences, and states of mind. Each poem provides a piece to a puzzle, juxtaposed with each other to support a bigger picture. Break is recommended not only for poetry and literary collections, but as a reflective piece for mental patients and their families.”
- D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
Adam Levon Brown’s remarkable collection, Break, shaped as a connected series of poems of address, takes us with shaking hand and clear voice through the heart of family trauma, into the life that must cope with its consequences, and salvage from the nearly final wreckage the means not only of survival, but transcendence. It is a gift of light derived through confrontation, narrative inquiry, persistent yearning to say what is needed, and an arrival at voice that eclipses the narrative project. The poem-by-poem evolution of language matching with near perfection voice, leg by leg, to journey elevates this collection from remembrance to gift.
- Marc Zegans, Poet, Author of La Commedia Sotterranea
2019-07-15
Brown (Death Is Not Our Holy Word, 2017, etc.) offers optimistic poetry about the realities of psychological illness.
"I can't write a villanelle," says the speaker in this collection's final piece, "To the Reader." However, the challenge of mastering the rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet is nothing compared to the pain of trauma, the horror of abuse, or the vertigo of the psychiatric unit, as evidenced in Brown's devastating new book of verse on psychological illness. The collection's greatest strength is the author's wrenching honesty; it takes courage to reveal the realities of psychic pain, and these poems are braver than most in that regard. Such pain can fracture lives, and accordingly, Brown's verse is often broken into quick, shattering bursts, as in "To My Trauma": "5 years of mountains / strip-mined / from / childhood / sizzling with ugly / stares." Here, the frequent line breaks stymie the regular flow of the words—a trick that he pulls off elsewhere with long spaces or slashes within lines. The effect, each time, is jarring but captivating. Yet the volume isn't all about anguish; Brown also offers glimpses of recovery and rehabilitation, and nowhere so elegantly as in "The Trauma of Spiritual Flesh." This long poem is built around two refrains: "I spoke to my trauma" and "I went where the hope lived," with the first eventually giving way to the second. The poem articulates one of the collection's main aspirations—that talking about our pain might lead to restoration. It concludes: "I spoke to my trauma; / I went where the hope lived; / and now all I can say is: / Your best day is still to come / give yourself a chance to live it." It's a message that many readers may find helpful.
A stirring exploration of trauma and healing.
