On Break Self: Feed, by Rusty Morrison of Omnidawn Publishing
BREAK SELF: FEED is stunningly myriad in its complexities, even as it is searingly direct in its line-by-line depiction of our human struggle to know ourselves and others, and to create a life that will “feed” us. The subject-matters of this text are jigsaw-puzzle pieces that mirror a life broken and yet finding the means to cohere.
It is a book raging against the ways we are bent on destruction, of natural world and of each other. Yet it is a book that honors the preciousness of the least living thing and offers that awareness through exactingly expressed depictions one will not soon forget.
And it is a book that brilliantly uses form to speak its subject matter. Here are the last lines of “We can’t Stop”:
"we wait, we grow,
slowly inch beyond skin’s boundaries, beyond our husks,
steadily tent to another’s warmth,
burst to touch rough air,
pull ourselves into daylight’s bareness."
Throughout the text, you will find a constancy of sonic sensitivity. Here “touch rough air” ends the penultimate line and then “daylight’s bareness” finishes the poem. While air and bareness only have the “a” sound in common, that is enough to let us feel the emptiness that the poem explains as the last line ends.
If we are courageous enough to touch rough air, then can we pull ourselves into the reality of daylight’s bareness? I so much appreciate that Myers can sense in what is often a positive trope (daylight) a frightening reality.
I have found in this work that if one has the courage to follow the imperative “Break Self,” then one may find so much that is freed, and so much that will feed the psyche and soul
It is a book raging against the ways we are bent on destruction, of natural world and of each other. Yet it is a book that honors the preciousness of the least living thing and offers that awareness through exactingly expressed depictions one will not soon forget.
And it is a book that brilliantly uses form to speak its subject matter. Here are the last lines of “We can’t Stop”:
"we wait, we grow,
slowly inch beyond skin’s boundaries, beyond our husks,
steadily tent to another’s warmth,
burst to touch rough air,
pull ourselves into daylight’s bareness."
Throughout the text, you will find a constancy of sonic sensitivity. Here “touch rough air” ends the penultimate line and then “daylight’s bareness” finishes the poem. While air and bareness only have the “a” sound in common, that is enough to let us feel the emptiness that the poem explains as the last line ends.
If we are courageous enough to touch rough air, then can we pull ourselves into the reality of daylight’s bareness? I so much appreciate that Myers can sense in what is often a positive trope (daylight) a frightening reality.
I have found in this work that if one has the courage to follow the imperative “Break Self,” then one may find so much that is freed, and so much that will feed the psyche and soul