The Breeze
The neighbors dragged
a deer carcass
out to the edge of the road.
It’s waiting now
for the garbage collectors
who will grab it by its hooves
and grunt it into the back
of their truck.
Until then, the ravens
are playing games with traffic,
picking pieces off
and bouncing away when a car
comes down the road.
It’s rainy today.
I cannot yet smell the rotting flesh.
My friend who was drafted
to kill men in Vietnam says he
can not stop smelling rotting flesh.
I wonder how it
smells to ravens.
I wonder if they can smell me.
_________________
John Brantingham
Review by Chapman Hood Frazier
As I read Brantingham’s other poems printed here, I found some of the same problems. Perhaps of the series, the most interesting poem is The Breeze. Though the poet also pushes it too far for my taste, the opening scene is sharp. I particularly like how the “garbage collectors” . . . will “grunt it into the back.” I think the word grunt here really underscores what is happening in the scene and conveys the heaviness of what the collectors are doing. I also like how the poet works with the sense of smell throughout the poem. The image of “rotting flesh” from the carcass of the dead deer where the ravens pick at its remains, comingled with the image of the friend’s inability to forget the smell of the dead he killed in Viet Nam, work well together. This is where the poem should end though. I believe the final stanza weakens the poem. It undermines the poem’s central tension by unnecessarily equating the speaker to rotting flesh.
Though I may be going out on a limb here, I believe Brantingham must trust the poem’s intent and allow it to evolve naturally. In my opinion, by pushing some sort of moralistic ending, I believe the poet weakens the real intensity of the poems. Each one has some very good images and sound quality. I would like to have seen less “push” towards some sort of moral ending. By trusting where the poem is going, the writer can sometimes follow what the text implies and let that come to the foreground.
Review by David A. Goodrum
Perhaps the word “smell” is used too often, but otherwise the poem is a pointed and graphic reminder of mortality and the persistence, and inevitability, of death. I might suggest experimenting with switching the order of the last two stanzas to end, not with the self, but with the friend.