Caitlin Higgins
English 371
Professor Scanlon
31 October 2007
Book Review
Lucie Brock-Broido’s
Trouble in Mind
Lucie Brock-Broido’s third published book of poetry, Trouble in Mind was published in 2004. This book consists of five different parts contained 10 poems each. Many of the poems in this collection focus on losses that have occurred throughout her life and express them with great imagination.
The first poem, “The Halo That Would Not Light” introduces one of the first main losses experienced by Brock-Broido, which was the loss of childhood. As an introduction to a collection of traveling through her inward life, the experience of realizing that childhood is over begins the journey inward. Later on in the first section, the loss of both her parents is spoken about as well as the loss of innocence. These losses are addressed directly, but how they are dealt with is described in a much more abstract manner. Rather than express how painful and troubling loss can be and dealing with it in the mind in a literal way, Brock-Broido finds a way to express her emotions through such abstract ways that the re-reading of any of the poems reveals something new to the reader.
The form of many of these poems includes short lines filled with a lot of punctuation. Lucie Brock-Broido’s manipulation of line cuts and placement of words creates poetry that allows the reader to find multiple meanings in the poems. It is easy to find many half-meanings within these poems which make them quite ambiguous in many cases. Each line is like a sentence in itself in each poem because the beginning of every line of poetry in this collection is capitalized. This is clearly done for a reason and mixes well with the mastery use of punctuation and line cuts which Brock-Broido exhibits.
The poem which is most unlike the others is in the fourth section of the collection. The poem entitled “Self-Portrait as Kaspar Hauser” is the third of seven self-portrait poems. Interestingly enough, none of the self-portraits are really a direct self-portrait of the author herself. This particular poem however is set up in a way that a question is asked and then answered almost as if it was an interview. The questions are simple, but the answers are more inwardly focused. Rather than have a simple question with a simple answer, the answers enter into a person’s real inner-world, just as the reader is entering into the poet’s inner thoughts and world in this collection and some of the questions a reader may ask can be answered, just not in simple forms.
As the collection continues, the introduction of animals, particularly the lion become more prominent. The use of the lion is done not only to show a motherly figure, but a wild, untamed animal as well. This animal is crucial to the work as a whole over all other animals because many of the poems focus on it, including the final poem of the entire collection entitled, “Self-Deliverance by Lion.” This poem is one of the simplest forms, with nine couplets. This poem finds a way to almost pull the reader back out of the inner-world of the poet and back into reality. The language that is used is not complex or metaphorical in any way, but straight forward and to the point. Here the poet expresses a hope, or rather a hopelessness of having less despair in her life. Although the road has been an interesting one, traveling through so much trouble and pain can be exhausting, not only for the poet, but for the reader as well to get through this collection.
This collection of poems is not simply one in which a poet expresses emotions of getting though a rough day, but the inner journey that one must take sometimes to get through each day and learn what they need to. Lucie Brock-Broido takes her readers on a journey through her mind so they can feel a bit of what she feels, even if it is the feeling of confusion and frustration in trying to understand one of the complex, metaphorical poems she includes so the reader does feel something. There is something for almost any reader in the collection of poems, from the simplest understanding of making it from the passage of childhood to adulthood all the way to the inner workings of dealing with death, Lucie Brock-Broido finds a way to express it.