Rookery, Oh Rookery

According to Wikipedia, imagery “is an author’s use of vivid and descriptive language to add depth to their work. It appeals to human sense to deepen the reader’s understanding of the work.” In her book of poems titled Rookery, Traci Brimhall incorporates imagery quite extensively to produce the quality of poetry she desires, which she does in various ways. One of which is the use of flowery diction. In her poem Restoration of the Saints, Brimhall includes an incredible range of evocative words to describe her father: at one point, she writes, “I know this is when his heart gave up, flared like a meteor, scoured by narcotics” (20). Consequently, the reader can almost feel the warmth of her father’s body slip away, leaving a cold, inanimate heart caked with years of opiate abuse. There are many other great images as well, such as “whiskeyed tongues,” “his wounds irresistible,” and “mutilated beauty.” Each of these different images provides a different piece of the complete picture that captures her father. I can already picture what he might look like, sound like, and smell like.

Another important part about this poem is Brimhall’s appeal to the different human senses. Throughout the second half of Restoration of the Saints, Brimhall writes of listening to “hearing his heartbeat,” “listening to something tremble so fast it sounds like water,” or “eyes searching for wind in an empty room.” This appeal to the sensory is repeated in another poem Echolalia, Saint Armands Key. Within just the two first stanzas, the narrator of the poem describes putting her “hand in the ocean,” but also hearing “whales call to each other” and a calf “singing its mother’s sadness”. Furthermore, she writes, “August singes our shoulders,” emulating the feel of the August sun burning the skin on shoulders. Also, in the poem Possession, Brimhall utilizes incredible metaphors, even incorporating animals: “vultures settled on your chest, and you remembered the anaconda seizing your legs.” Her diction reminds me of the work of Jack Kerouac because both writers tend to combine two different images together, like “pink Amazon dolphins.” It seems that Brimhall’s deliberate appeal to the human senses works in a way that places the reader in the world of the poem.

With that in mind, it is interesting that in most of the poems in Rookery, the main pronouns used are “you,” “I,” or “we.” The poems seem to be a reminiscence of a time shared intimately between two people, probably of some love affair. Throughout Rookery, Brimhall utilizes astounding metaphors. They all are really impressive. Her strength as a poet is definitely imagery, but I think one area where her poems lack is the structure. I don’t quite understand why she decides to use the constant two or three line stanzas and why each sentence is broken into different lines. I don’t really get it, and I don’t like it. Nonetheless, her poems are amazingly vivid and potent with emotional context. I just wish she’d organize them a little more efficiently.