The Spring 2009 issue FIELD is all poetry! And enter Sara Michas-Martin in her first appearance in the magazine! Next, enter as many colors for the brain as you can imagine: twilight, pink, bowling ball, the color of your head under a hat. The brain is flexible. It thinks! And one of my favorite parts of this poem is the way it creates a dialogue between "what the speaker has to say" and "why the speaker would be making such claims." It's kind of like that subtle point where you see a brain, physically see it, and then try to understand that all your thoughts actually happen in that cauliflower looking thing.
In the case of this poem, though, I am more interested because of the way the poem slyly complicates itself, starting with this exotic image of a brain in a jar, and then speculating about what that looks like (a government that's lost its country?), and then, through implication, trying to understand how this thing could be responsible for the decisions people make for themselves. It's not a huge step, then, for the speaker to wonder how her brain might be responsible for herself, and, if the poem isn't already complicated enough for you, that's where Michas-Martin takes you to school. All these different ways a brain could be working: memories, biases, imaginations. They're all there.
And while this is happening, she keeps admiring the brain, just for being a brain! "I ask if I can touch the brain, / maybe hold it, and when I do its weight / tests the give of both hands. I think of bowling / and watermelons floating in a pool" I think those watermelons floating in the pool are my favorite!
Related Links:
FIELD (worldcat search for FIELD)
Goddard Faculty page (she has a statement about brains there!)
