Glassworks
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • masthead
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 21
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass fall 2020
    • interview with Porsha Olayiwola
    • new book reviews
    • new opinion editorials
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • fall 2020
    • spring 2020
    • fall 2019
    • spring 2019
    • fall 2018
    • spring 2018
    • fall 2017
    • apprentice 2017
    • spring 2017
    • fall 2016
    • spring 2016
    • fall 2015
    • spring 2015
    • fall 2014
    • spring 2014
    • spring 2012
    • winter 2012
    • fall 2011
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews >
      • Ed Briant
      • Eugene Cross
      • Josh Denslow
      • Christopher DeWan
      • Katherine Flannery Dering >
        • Aftermath
      • Eric Dyer
      • Julie Enszer >
        • Avowed
      • Mitchell Fink
      • Olivia Gatwood
      • David Gerrold
      • Cynthia Graham
      • Ernest Hilbert
      • Paul Lisicky >
        • The Roofers
      • Scott McCloud
      • Jan Millsapps
      • Anis Mojgani
      • Pedram Navab
      • Kelly Norris
      • Porsha Olayiwola
      • Michael Pagdon
      • Aimee Parkison >
        • The Petals of Your Eyes
      • Brad Parks
      • Chris Rakunas
      • Carlos Ramos
      • Mary Salvante
      • Jill Smolowe
      • Jayne Thompson
      • Julie Marie Wade
      • Melissa Wiley
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2020
    • flash glass 2019
    • flash glass 2018
    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
    • photography
    • audio
    • video
    • new media
  • archive
    • read past issues
    • order print issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • newsletter

Review: Scrap Iron

8/1/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Small Town Displacement
Review: Scrap Iron


Carly Szabo

Mark Jay Brewin, Jr.
Poetry
The University of Utah Press, pp. 92
Cost: $11.80


Mark Jay Brewin, Jr. dares his audience to pontificate the world and relationships around them in his stunning work of poetry Scrap Iron. Written with a narrative voice, these poems are less like traditional poetry and more like beautifully detailed, deeply personal stories that explore the complexities of familial relationships and the desire to be elsewhere. Broken into three parts, there is a clear beginning middle and end to this book of poetry that is lacking in other similar works. Rather than leaving the reader empty and unfulfilled, the carefully comprised structure of this book ends with the reader left in a state of deep thought and satisfaction.

Scrap Iron, winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry, begins with a focus on the small town, blue collar lifestyle experienced by the author. There is a strong focus on his father and what it means to be a man in the working class, providing the reader with a sense of reverence of his father’s hard work. Though with this reverence comes a feeling of displacement from the author. In many of his poems he is seen juxtaposed to his father rather than in unison with the man; he is reading and burying himself in facts of faraway lands while his father is working the land or working in the power plant nearby. This theme of the complexities of relationships between the author and those around him reverberates throughout the entire piece, especially in Part II of the book when the author finally gets the chance to explore the world about which he has heretofore only read.

Moving from Part I to Part II of the work, the reader can distinguish a difference in tone when the author makes remarks about his family. At this point, the narrator has gone abroad, experiencing firsthand the lands he read so much about. Though this travel comes with new perspectives about the world and those around him, leading some relationships to be strained such as those between himself and his brother and mother. This change in the dynamic of his relationships is further illustrated in Part III of the work where he returns from his travels and is back “home” with his family. While the narrator may come off at some times “holier than thou” in his descriptions of his globally ignorant family members, this is simply his lamenting over the fact that he will never truly fit in amongst his family. There will always be that gap in understanding the world differently from them due to his travels, readings and introspection.

While Scrap Iron reads very much like a memoir about the family dynamic of the author after his travels, the work is also beautifully poetic in its descriptions and profoundly moving in its juxtapositions of facts about the land around the narrator with facts about his family members and how the two relate to one another. The metaphors used in this work are as intricate as they are gorgeously emotive and require a great attention to detail on the part of the reader. This in conjunction with the story that pushes the reader through the book makes for a thoroughly captivated audience left utterly fulfilled and deeply moved by the end of the work. Deserving of its title as the 2012 winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry, Scrap Iron certainly won’t disappoint its readers.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    book reviews by glassworks editorial staff



    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    March 2013
    December 2012


    Categories

    All
    Able Muse
    Abuse
    Agha Shahid Ali Prize
    Alfred A. Knopf
    Alternative Book Press
    Andrews McMeel Publishing
    Animals
    Anthea Bell
    Aqueous Books
    Art
    Ashland Creek Press
    Autumn House Press
    Bedazzled Ink Publishing
    Belleview Literary Press
    Bellevue
    Berlin Wall
    Black Lawrence Press
    Book Review
    Bottom Dog Press
    Brassbones And Rainbows
    Button Poetry
    Cake Train Press
    Catholic Guilt
    Chapbook
    Chris-rakunas
    Chronic Illness
    Coffee House Press
    Cold War
    Collection
    Coming Of Age
    Copper Canyon Press
    Divertir Publishing
    Drama
    Elroy Bode
    Ernest Hilbert
    Essays
    Eugen Ruge
    Fading Light
    Fairy Tales
    Family
    Farm
    Fat Dog Books
    Father
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Flash
    Furniture Press Books
    Future Tense Books
    Gdr
    Gender
    Geology
    Glassworks Book Review
    Gospel
    Greywolf Press
    Haiti
    Harbor Mountain Press
    Haute Surveillance
    Hepner
    Historical Fiction
    Holocaust
    Howling Bird Press
    Humor
    Identity
    Imagery
    Immigration
    Jacquline Doyle
    Jaded Ibis Press
    Johanne Goransson
    Journalism
    Jude Ezeilo
    Katya Apekina
    Language
    Lee L. Krecklow
    Lewis Hine
    LGBT
    Literature
    Lori Ann Stephens
    Memoir
    Mental Health
    #MeToo
    Midsummer Night's Press
    Midwest
    Milkweed Editions
    Mixed Media
    Modern Poetry
    Multi Genre
    Multi-genre
    Nature
    Nature Writing
    Nonfiction
    Novalee And The Spider Secret
    Novel
    Other Press
    Painting
    Poetry
    Poetry Prize
    Poetry Review
    Politics
    Press 53
    Prose Poetry
    Race
    Red Bird Chapbooks
    Red Hen Press
    Relationships
    Richard Siken
    Sarah Caulfield
    Sexuality
    Shechem Press
    Shirley Bradley Leflore
    Short Story
    Sickness
    Social Issues
    Son
    Sonnet
    Spine
    Spoken Word
    Steve Royek
    Stories
    Surveillance
    Susanne Dyckman
    Suspense
    Tarpaulin Sky
    Tears For The Mountian
    Tolsun Books
    Torrey House Press
    Tragedy
    Travel
    Twodollarradio
    University Of Utah Press
    University Press
    Unmitzer
    Unnamed Press
    Violence
    William Glassley
    Wings Press
    Winter Goose Publishing
    Women
    World War II

    RSS Feed

Picture

260 Victoria Street • Glassboro, New Jersey 08028 
glassworksmagazine@rowan.edu

All Content on this Site
(C) 2021 glassworks