Brosnan, Michael: Emu Blis

Broadstone Media LLC, paperback

Publication Date: February 15, 2024

Publisher Marketing: In his dazzling new collection poet Michael Brosnan literally and figuratively deconstructs the "sublime" in every way imaginable. "This world of us -- it seems only capable of revealing hints of care in slant rhymes and odd enjambments. And I'm wondering why we don't cry more, knowing there's so little we control." In this profound volume of experimental poetry, Michael Brosnan exhibits exquisite control as he employs (and invents) tools of verse language (far beyond mere "odd enjambments") to interrogate - and deconstruct, literally - the word sublime, in all of its senses. "Excellence? Grandeur? Beauty? Inspiring unavoidable awe?" No mere exercise in linguistics, however, his enterprise provides the opportunity to consider no less than the entirety of human existence in the face of "the nagging matter of / the coming Sixth Extinction -- hurried along / by superciliousness and / human hunger for what cannot be obtained." "I want to find less in meaninglessness," he declares; "I want to know if knowing can save us from ourselves," and this book is the record of his search for that answer and hope. Many sublime companions (real and imaginary) are along for the ride - Mozart, Coltrane, Jimmy Page, Moby-Dick, Dr. Philosophy - while erasures of Wordworth poems frame and intersperse the work (an act of distillation that serves as a model for the book as a whole); and the titles of a library's worth of books whispering from their shelves attests to his extensive reading. Impossible to describe in brief, it must be read to experience the sweep of Brosnan's vision and venture. As for the payoff: in the end he is after "a small wave of contentment" as expressed in the craft of "Origami" - "Today, I'm seeking new possibilities / in a small illusion with unambiguous lines. // Look, world, look. / Our story is in tatters. // Here's a 'dove' for you to hold. / I give it in peace. Make it fly." In the closing Wordsworth erasure, and old man rises and hoists up his load, a fitting image for the service Brosnan performs for us in undertaking this poetry and philosophical enquiry.