Customer Reviews

My Brother is Getting Arrested Again (Pitt Poetry Series)

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Daisy Fried, My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again (University of Pittsburgh, 2006)

The most impressive thing about Daisy Fried's My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again is the plethora of voices she takes on-- convincingly-- in these seventy-two pages of poems. By the end of the book, it's likely you'll have no idea what race or religion she is (and I'm only guessing at the sex because of the name, to be honest). The washed-out author photo on the back doesn't help much, which I assume was the intent. What I could glean was that Daisy Fried is from Philadelphia, and that she can write.

DOLL RITUAL
Spanking the bad, kissing the good ones, that's a thrill,
poor things. Mornings I lay out all the teds and dollies
with their bald spots, coy looks, rag bodies, hysterical eyes.
Some with chewed off noses. Some, patches where snot,
pee, has dried. The one I name Ti-Anne, my favorite, my doll
afraid of all the others, with broken eyelids supposed to flip up
stuck shut? Her I sit to one side to watch the whippings.
Her namesake, Ti-Anne (don't ask), my best enemy (I have
lots of enemies, she's the only one I name a doll for) has eyes
those same types of hysterical colors, changes them daily.
She licks her fingers before she tries to stick them in my eyes.
No one yells but someone sings ha ha. "Ti-Anne, Ti-Anne,"
I call, "you stink!" and you know the bad girl smashes my lunchbox
thinking it's my face. I'm thinking about this, I see my pattern:
incitement, paralysis, incitement, paralysis. Why can't you
ever handle what you start, little girl? See, I have never
been poor at all, except just an indigence, also
a mendacity, of heart; and the way I think it's otherwise.


This is good stuff. Give it a shot, see what you think. ***

I should preface: I don't go out of my way to read poetry. I appreciate the greats (Hughes, Neruda, Eliot) but wouldn't consider myself a Poetry Person. Generally, though, I'm mad for great writing.

That said, this book rocks the f*** out. The poems are deftly lyrical, so you're not put off. They feel fresh and rich at the same time. My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again makes me think that maybe one day, I will consider myself a Poetry Person.

Daisy Fried has a trick to writing poetry. You could
do it yourself and be a famous poet. Here it is:
all you have to do is lyrically and econmomically
take the reader into the heart of a situation. A bar
on New Year's Day for instance. You have to put us there
with such magical authority that we can smell the beer
and the lime-scented cologne. Then when you've got us
there (remember the part about being lyrical) you have
someone or something speak out with heart-breaking honesty
that brings us to our knees.

Got it? First, the lyricism-rely on your youth. Then the
illusionless honesty-rely on your wisdom. Nothing to it
really, you should give it a try. I'll buy your book
as soon as it comes out.

In the meantime, I'll just read more of Daisy Fried.




--Lynn Hoffman, author of New Short Course in Wine,The and
bang BANG: A Novel ISBN 9781601640005