By Brandi Homan (M.F.A. ’07)
[Shearsman Books, 2008.
95 pages, $15 paperback]
Reviewed by Elizabeth Burke-Dain
In her first collection of poems, Hard Reds, Brandi Homan paints a clear portrait of the woman behind the words: part biker chick, part philosopher, part witch doctor. Her poetry is a mixture of avant-garde contemplations and heartsick country music. In the first poem, “Explaining Poetry on a First Date,” the narrator tries justifying poetry to a suitor who won’t get it, not because of a refusal to understand, but because poetic understanding is what Homan describes as “affliction not religion. / Not once have I thought I could be saved.”
The book is broken up into three sections: “Like the Devil,” “Two Kinds of Arson,” and “The Valentine Factory.” The color red figures into almost all of the poems. It represents the devil, sexuality, and violence—often all at the same time. Homan unleashes demons with a turn of phrase, eats their flesh, and then salves their wounds with balms and ointments. In the poem “Country Songs Always Tell Stories,” she alludes to the tragic story of Lennie in Of Mice and Men:
I’ve always felt sorry for Lennie and giants
and you, little bull with the thousand china
cuts I would lick shut .…
.… Your cuts will close,
I promise, but you will snap
my neck.
The poem “Meditations on a Ball Bearing” is something of a departure from the fabulous vampiric drama of the other pieces. It’s a meditation and a metaphor for the sympathetic ache of life:
Things roll better than
They slide. Slick as conceit
And shiny as conscience
In your weaned casing,
Whenever I watch you
I ache everywhere soft.
Homan’s wonderful poems say many things, and one of her messages might just be that love will kill you—but not on purpose.
Brandi Homan is editor-in-chief of Switchback Books, a feminist poetry press. She earned her M.F.A. from Columbia College Chicago and her M.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Homan writes professionally in advertising. Her chapbook, Two Kinds of Arson, is available from dancing girl press.
