The following is part one of my commentary on Stephanie Brown's poem "Stacks."
I first encountered Stephanie Brown’s poetry in The Body Electric: America’s Best American Poetry from The American Poetry Review (W.W. Norton, 2001) and I recall so vividly my reaction to two of her poems, “We Librarians are Going to Baja” and “I Was a Phoney Baloney!”. Mind was blown. Period. The level of sarcasm and wit clung to my brain cells. What I cannot tell you is how many times I read and re-read these poems; the voice, style, structure, spoke to me in a way that I had not experienced in my reading life, and of course my (slightly) younger self connected with several themes (sex, identity, class) present in these two pieces. Who am I kidding, my older self continues to connect intimately with these poems as well as the broadening scope of Brown’s oeuvre. At the time I was working on my M.Ed. in Library Media Studies, and I only just recently left behind eighteen plus years of librarianship -although I keep my hand in at a lovely public library on Saturdays as a children’s librarian. It is hard to let go, and Brown's poem reminds us of the "Preservation the / Interpretation the" (lines 28-29) of the self and our greatest institution. In "Stacks," repetition functions as the forging tool.
Brown’s anaphoric inversion breaks away from the traditional use of anaphora often applied at the beginning of the poetic line. Instead, Brown places the repetition at the end of the line. Here, the determiner “the” enjambs each brief line enforcing unusual power in a three-letter term we often take for granted in the English language:
Democracy is the
Library is the
Temple of learning the
Dangerous the (lines 1-4)
“The” not only acts as a modifier, but determines the nature of reference. Immediately we are ‘in it’ drenched with political organization and majority because the people are the democracy and the “Library is the/Temple” of the people. The public library is a sovereign nation; it is all things to all people as it represents, dare I say it, the cornerstone of democracy. Conceptually, the opening term is quickly reinforced by “the” and this is the path we are on until we reach the poem’s end. Brown’s anaphora also forces the reader to move from line to line rather quickly, affecting rhythm, tone, and speed and all three of these devices radically position the speaker’s voice:
People’s university the
Cradle of civilization the
Ancient house the
Keeping of knowledge the (lines 5-8)
Notice the first two lines of the poem end with “is the”. We see an immediate radical shift when “is” disappears after line two and “the” completely takes over; it is the strike on the anvil. “Stacks” does not hesitate or pause, there is no punctuation housing the images of “Bad conduct” and “upskirt photos” (lines 13-14) or “the / Angry crazy shirtless the” (lines 15-16). We are patrons here. We wander through the stacks to seek and find. “Stacks” is a litany for all time. After all, the public library is a church of freedom; it is the one institution in the United States that is for the people.
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