Contemporary Poetry

: a web symposium  |  Spring 2006

Exactly What Happened by Joel Brouwer
Purdue University Press, 1999

In his book Exactly What Happened, Joel Brouwer employs a joking, but simultaneously scornful, tone in his criticism of culture and human experience. Brouwer does not want us to finish reading his poems, put down the book and innocently giggle at its content and comedy. Rather, his black humor and existentialist scorn implore us to laugh at some of the ridiculous aspects of the poems but leave us with a sense that we, too, share in the darker side of humanity that is poignantly captured in his writing. Brouwer uses the vividly colorful palette of black humor to paint a picture of the world that allows us to laugh at and mourn the condition of society and humanity simultaneously. His writing shows the reader that authorship and subjective, individualized creation are the some of the tools that we need if we are to confront the problems of human condition in the midst of worn-out and prescribed ‘objective facts’ or grand narratives. Brouwer is no nihilist; he simply revels in the absurdity of all things in human experience and celebrates life accordingly.

In order to help us overcome the problem of a meaningless, absurd universe, Brouwer stresses the importance of authorship throughout this book. Although we may not fully understand exactly what happens, the very fact that we are not overwhelmed by the meaninglessness of existence is a Pyrrhic victory. This is why Brouwer alludes to the idea of creation, even the creation of artifice through art or magic, in a number of his poems. What is curious about this poet, though, is his infatuation with tercets and quatrains. The majority of the poems in this book take on these forms although the subject matter fails to fit neatly into the rigid boundaries of what appears to be verse poetry with lines of similar length. It is this juxtaposition of a subjective idea of authorship with the stale rigidity of inherited forms which speaks volumes about his project. Brouwer is simply one author musing to himself, a solitary voice in the midst of a crowded and disordered world. He writes with these inherited forms because it is the only way he, as a poet, knows how to express his specific concerns. In this book the content is much more important than the form. The paradoxical triumph over form through the guise of verse poetry is something universal that each individual can relate to: an individualized, subjective form of authorship over one’s existence. It is only this universal that can equip us with what we need to encounter a universe as tumultuous as ours.

The inability to entirely explicate experience is recurrent Brouwer’s poems. Brouwer’s project illustrates a distrust in all things handed-down; he continuously points out the flaws of generally accepted ways of thinking and ways of life. In terms of being able to make sweeping, objective observations about our universe, he discounts the activities of science, rational thought, folklore, traditions, prescribed grand narratives, and even the individual to an extent. For Brouwer, not even the individual can prescribe what is true for others, never mind what is true for all; his poems convey a struggled search for truth within each individual. All of these ideas can be found throughout the text, but a poem in particular that sums up the contempt and distrust Brouwer has toward the hand-me-downs of society is “Astronomers Detect Water in Distant Galaxy, Suggest Life May Be Present Throughout Universe.”

In this poem Brouwer writes, in perfect tercets with similar line length, about the possibility of creating a utopian world for a race of beings that may or may not exist. He juxtaposes the idealized perfection of a society with such trivialities as “smashed china // on the kitchen floor” (lines 9-10). By substituting things such as freedom from bouncing checks with the idea of a perfected race of beings, Brouwer is playing with our expectations. The voice created in this poem is unfoundedly hopeful and unaware that such idealizations could never come true. With the musicality and rhythm created by the refrains in this poem (phrases beginning with “maybe,” “no,” and “of”), the discourse of the speaker takes on the guise of an emphatic, emotional speech. While we might laugh at the naiveté and pretentiousness of the speaker, we can recognize that the poem creates an alternate reality in which the irreconcilable truths about human nature hold strong. No matter what planet we live on, no matter how hard we may “help them avoid our mistakes” (20), and no matter whether or not “they could be perfect, with our help” (24), it is of no consequence. In the end, the irreconcilable truths of living human beings, not these imagined beings of perfection envisaged in the abstract, will reign supreme. Although the speaker never explicitly suggests that humans would commit an atrocity, there still exists the imperfect human being “wondering // when somewhere out there the first shark / will feel its first tooth / rise like a dagger from its jaw” (27-30). This person has not even perfected the ideal race yet, and already is wondering how long it will take to undo the work. This theme of being constricted by the bounds of the most basic truths of the human condition is common throughout Exactly What Happened.

While we may be unable to sufficiently explain the reason behind the pervading corruption of humanity, Brouwer tries to equip his readers with the necessary tools to begin to confront these problems. Although providing any semblance of an overriding, objective solution is impossible in Brouwer’s world, the possibility for each individual to make sense of the universe is certainly plausible and is celebrated by the poet. It is only through a subjective creation of a narrative that we are able to give our existence a proper context and meaning within a universe that defies all laws of logic and reason. In a world in which nothing is sacred, where nothing has meaning, we are left with the task of filling in the missing pieces of the puzzle. We must construct our own ideas about what has so-called meaning and what will make existence worthwhile. This must be done by each individual and cannot be conferred upon any other persons. While this is a respectable endeavor according to the existentialist, it involves a level of artifice that is unavoidable when considering a universe where everything boils down to a question of subjective beliefs and convictions. Thus, sometimes, in order to explain one’s existence, to tell exactly what happened, the truth must be slightly skewed in order to soften the blow of reality.

The title-poem of this book, “Exactly What Happened,” wholeheartedly adopts this view of the subjective creation of meaning. This poem also serves as an ars poetica for Brouwer and attempts to explain the problems lying in front of him, as a poet: the subjective, meaningless universe, the artifice it requires, and the attempt of the individual to allow others to glimpse into one’s consciousness and feel what they feel, to see what they see. When the policeman in this poem asks for the explicit details of the assailant and receives such intimate details as the exact tattoos on his body, the officer reminds the speaker that the utmost precision is necessary in conveying exactly what has happened. He implores the speaker to “Make me feel like I was there! Put me inside your skin! / Force the whole kicking terror of that moment down my throat!” (20-21). Spitefully the speaker proceeds to reel off a list of ultra-explicit details in a poetic voice, one which forces itself into the thought process of the speaker and allows the officer to more succinctly experience the moment. After the officer praises the speaker for his work, the speaker has a revelation that gives an important insight into Brouwer’s poetic project.

No, not that kind of revelation. The one experienced by the speaker here is simply this: “you’re the student now: you’ll yammer all day // about what never happened to make this man believe / it’s exactly what did” (39-41). In this alternate realm of subjectivity, mutually understood truths are of no importance. Rather, what is important is ‘exactly what happened,’ as this is the only way that an individual can rectify his own existence in the midst of nothing of meaning. A similar idea is conveyed in a poem called “Former Kenyan Parliament Member Arrested For ‘Imagining the Death’ of President Daniel Arap Moi.” In this poem, Brouwer blurs the barriers between what is objectively real and what exists solely in the imagination of the individual. In a universe devoid of objective meaning, the individual’s imagination has just as much credence as widely accepted facts, if not more. That is partly why this poem is so comical. It makes us consider such a philosophically abstract notion of existence, but at the same time we’re given the example of a government official who will be harshly punished for a thought.

In order to severely punish a person in the tangible realm, imagination must be of some import or else this never could have occurred. The line between subjective fiction and what is known as objective reality are so fuzzy that it is futile to try to separate the two in a world such as ours. This is why it is comical to consider an official locked in a prison cell and imagining that he is no longer imprisoned but rather vacationing in Florence. The speaker paints a vivid scene in which what is real becomes part of what is imagined, and vice versa. “See how he pauses at the threshold? / Each time he steps over, the truncheons of the actual / blast again like an avalanche against his broken legs” (26-28). In an adroitly deft poetic move, Brouwer pauses at the threshold at the end of the line and creates an inquisitive, wandering texture in his speakers’ voices. This is common in his work since his speakers are continuously in search of meaning. As with the rest of the book, and as is common in black humor writing, Brouwer’s musings leave us disoriented about our place in existence and put us in an interrogative mood about what is real and what can be done to overcome this existential problem.

You may be asking yourself, “Why should I continue to search for this meaning if it’s an imaginative, subjective free-for-all anyway? Can’t I simply vest my faith in anything I want? Why even bother to try to search for it if there’s nothing to be found in that realm of what is true?” Well, Brouwer, like any good existential, black humorist poet, likely predicted that his readers would question things such as this and accounted for it by including poems alluding to the highly existentialist “The Myth of Sisyphus” in some ways. In this Albert Camus myth, Sisyphus is doomed to endlessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain only to watch it roll back down to the incline every single time. Unexpectedly, however, he contorts his own thoughts so that he takes a joy in this activity and continues to forge onward in the face of certain uncertainty and absurdity. This, Brouwer suggests, is the task of the individual. Faced with an unavoidably meaningless existence, we must forge onward and whistle in the dark, knowing full well that no lofty, objective answers will ever be arrived at.

Taking this into account, it is much easier to understand “The Future.” This poem portrays a pitiful prestidigitator that aspires to tell fortunes, but can never make a single correct prophecy. As the speaker visits this fortuneteller on his way to work every morning, he relays that “Some days he’d smile at my card, assure me / I’d be worth billions by sunset, more often / that I’d better call my mother one last time” (18-20) before enduring a terrible death. When the speaker confronts the magician one day about his inability to successfully forecast the future, the man replies, “Young friend, I don’t tell fortunes to be right, / that would be nuts! No one can know what comes next!” (27-28). This shows an appreciation of subjectivity in the midst of what can never truly be known. Although the speaker is satisfied by the answer, the remaining lines of the poem indicate that some things can be foretold, but this does not imply that these things are certain by nature. That is, although something may be expected to happen, that does not entail a complete understanding of it. In fact, the speaker may not even be consciously aware of this fact. “The day was nearly done. Next came night. / We shared a smoke in the dying air / which already smelled of tomorrow, where yet again - / we know it for certain - / the anything that always happens will” (29-33). Clearly, this is a celebration of uncertainty, an uncertainty that may well be the one objective truth of human existence.

Brouwer celebrates this perceived truth and deems it as important in the individual’s attempt to tackle the troubles enveloped in an absurd existence. Like Sisyphus, we must simply keep rolling our boulders to the top of the mountain regardless of whether or not they will fall. Throughout this book Joel Brouwer scorns the problems of human existence through techniques of black humor, but as we see in the final poem of the book, he affirms existence over all else. It is this irrational affirmation of uncertain life over the certainty of death that transforms Brouwer’s project into the notebook scratchings of the Sisyphus within each individual. In “What to Do,” a presumed guide for how to digest all of the seemingly irreconcilable existential problems on our plates after reading this book, the message is clear: we should aspire “simply to stand in the glow / of potential” (3-4) and shout out, “I want to be content / with indecision, I wish to choose it” (4-5). This, Brouwer implies, is far better than simply going along with the prescribed roles of life we are supposedly born into; it is better than adopting the social and political agendas of our kin; it is better than being rigidly decisive and being miserable with said decisions; but mostly, it is better than doing nothing and better than buying into grand narratives. We must remember that one objective ‘truth’: that nothing is certain, that nothing has meaning. The poet’s celebration of individual choice over the collectivized abstraction of the masses is conveyed in the final verses of Exactly What Happened: “We forget every choice / annuls whole worlds we might have loved, / changes this one as little as one voice / in counterpoint to the mob’s crude chant. Ignore / those starry torches. They go where they go” (10-14). All we can d as individuals is to subjectively choose life over death despite the absurdity of our existence. Even if we fail to do this, it would not make a difference. In fact, no matter what we do the world still turns. All we can do is continuously tell ourselves ‘exactly what happened’ and soften the blow of reality as it rains down upon us in terrifying, kicking and screaming blows that we cannot understand.

Further Reading

Brouwer, Joel. “Book Review: Last Chance For the Tarzan Holler.” The Boston Review. 1998. 4 May 2006. http://bostonreview.net/BR23.5/Brouwer.html

Brouwer, Joel. Centuries: Prose Poems. Boston: University Press of New England, 2003.

Brouwer, Joel. “The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998 - Review.” The Progressive. (1999).

Brouwer, Joel. “The Mercy. (book review)” The Progressive. Aug. 1999. The Gale Group. 4 May 2006. http://www.highbeam.com/library/docfree.asp?DOCID=1G1:55309056&ctrlInfo=Round19%3AMode19a%3ADocG%3AResult&ao=

Brouwer, Joel and Clover, Joshua. “Poetry Chronicle.” The New York Times. 27 Nov. 2005.

Brouwer, Joel and Clover, Joshua. “Poetry Chronicle.” The New York Times. 17 Jul. 2005.

Brouwer, Joel and McHenry, Eric. “Poetry Chronicle.” The New York Times. 23 Apr. 2006.

Sampsell, Kevin. “Book Review Revue: Exactly What Happened.” The Stranger. 2000. Index Publishing. 3 May 2006. http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=3238