Marianne Brems's second full-length collection, Within the Trifles, published by Kelsay Books, is a noteworthy effort by a poet who came to poetry relatively late in life after writing technical and language textbooks. She has blossomed quickly in the space of a few years with several chapbooks and now her second collection, with an epigraph by Dickens, “trifles are the sum of life”. Indeed, Brems works hard to prove this observation, as she focuses on the minute details of ordinary life and bring them to the forefront with uncommon insights. Brems has an unusual take on the function of poetry: she doesn't present philosophical arguments or show off post-modern language and forms. Instead, she uses plain language to explore small details that are usually beneath our awareness. Her purpose is to help us notice what's around us that we often take for granted or simply pass over. One might consider such topics as boring, beneath our dignity to focus on; Brems attempts to prove otherwise. In this effort, her poetry is successful.

 

Brems sub-headings are indicative: Order, Connection, Hope, Unexceptional Events, People, and Nature's Ways. Each poem is fairly short, most a single page. She writes in comfortable stanzas, occasionally couplets, and disregards meter, rhyme, or rhythm; a reader has no need for any background in formal poetics. She writes in easy language, meaning her work is accessible to almost every audience, and in the first person.

Her topics are mundane: in Unexceptional Events and Connection, she points to the small, the detailed, the linked in life. In “Invertebrate”, she compares her poem to an octopus: “when my poem cries out for bed/ ... I kiss it goodnight/ only to find an arm or two already slipped out”. An unusual take. In “Laundry Day”, “A family of laundry out on a line... / in the freshness of sun and wind/ on laundry day.” Here is a “Pause”: “shy.../the shadow unnoticed/ on an overcast day.” She hopes “breathing may go forward/ to open a hungry space.” But she doesn't dip into that hungry space, into how people, not a pause, might suffer or yearn for some future. The reader gets little sense of a deeper thematic thread such as family, history, fate and chance, or even human emotions.

Much of the language is charming. In Hope: “the back of an earring/ waiting for its other half...” she says in “Dish of Orphans”. And for People: a woman who self-effaces “this inflation of politeness,/ this everlasting deference,/ effacing her words...” or “The Seventy-Somethings” with “No lifeboat on the horizon, no way to turn back...”. Finally in Nature's Ways. “Tufts of gray and white fur/ lie next to the trail...” an unknown small creature has met its fate. A wren appears “not much bigger than a shallot”. In “Pure Joy” children play at the beach, “Foam spills over them,/ as they gasp, shriek,/ and tumble...”. A tiny image, but a familiar one.

In each case, Brems shows us the particular, the minute, the commonplace, but with a keen eye and sensitivity. We pay more attention to these items after she points them out and pushes us to open our eyes as we walk through our days. Yes here's a spider web, or a bird nest, or a woman standing in her driveway. Look at the olives in the refrigerator, or a pile of junk mail. There's something to notice everywhere. This reader found many lovely images: ”space for the unexamined bending of trees” in a disquisition on letters of the alphabet, or “autumn and anniversaries pass me by” as sofa pillows get old. But I miss more focus on the specific human element of inert objects like a paper clip in a dish, when she observes “there is comfort/ in making the world small for a moment”, just not her world.

This poetry is easy to read and understand, unadorned. It is satisfying to read an entire book of poetry and not have any questions, worries or arguments. I can relate to a nearly empty refrigerator (but without any implication of want), letter-writing intentions, a loose button, or a toddler playing. What I miss are more personal insights into life in all its angst and frustrations, or its sublime joys. For this reader, it's too glib, without mystery, very culturally American of a certain class. Perhaps in a future collection, Brems will dig deeper into her own soul and personal experience and expose something truly novel. For now, life in Brems's poetry is comfortable and predictable, a restful alternative to the complexities and uncertainties of our times . It is poetry that soothes the mind.