Abecedarium

Abecedarium, by Kevin Brown, 2011, Finishing Line Press, 28 pp., paper, $14, ISBN 1-59924-728-3 / ISBN 978-1-59924-728-1. Reviewed by David Chorlton.

If you ever wondered about the meaning and correct usage of a word like kakistocracy, Kevin Brown has stepped up to make your life easier. With this, and twenty-five other rarely used words as a stimulus to his imagination, the author creates a different kind of chapbook with an obvious affection for language itself. Kakistocracy is a noun, defined as government by the worst citizens, and in the poem with this title we find it as a word we might have heard more often on the media news. It begins:

We do not fight; we filibuster, delaying
debate and deadening discussion until
any bill we passed would be pointless.

My stump speech was designed

to woo your swing vote, with promises of
plenty and a relationship that would not tax
either of us.

As it works its way through the alphabet, this short collection provides its author with a format that allows for a range of topics, sometimes philosophical, sometimes looking back to childhood as in Calenture (n. – a disease incident to sailors within the tropics, . . .), where we find Brown and friends hiding "in the wild//grass that washed up on the shore/of our well-kept backyards.” From the same poem, an example of Kevin Brown’s finely textured approach to language:

bullies who battered

our egos as well as our bodies,
nothing more than mizzenmasts
in a maelstrom, or middle-school
romance, rules more complex

"Wonderclout” examines the showy but worthless presence of a star performing in an arena, "Sansculottic” the experience of one who is clothed inadequately, and "Terriculament” follows as a poem about the planes crashing into the towers and the aftermath of the day, with its color coded alarms etc., as a study of what it is to inspire with groundless fear.

An idea like this can easily bring on superficiality, so it is to Kevin Brown’s credit that each of the 26 poems would work well by any other title. The chapbook demonstrates a range of interests and cultural references that add substance to the whole.

Anyone who finds Kevin Brown through this new, short collection, may also be interested in his 2009 book, Exit Lines, from Plain View Press (102 pp., paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-935514-34-3). The language here is often plain compared to the newer work, as are many of the situations that provide a foundation for the poems. "Leftovers,” for instance, begins: "She sits at the kitchen table/wondering where she can/scrounge supper while//she pays a pile of bills,/the memory of the man/who most recently left.” But one poem that shows Brown’s affection for poetry is "Undergraduate Poetry.” The title might lead us to expect a put-down, and the first line tells us that "they mangle metaphors,” but the ending says more.

they still

believe that poetry can
change the world.

And so it does.

For them.