Book review

Arnold Brown publishes book of poems

Arnold Brown enjoys a cup of tea at his home in Craftsbury.  Photo by Bethany M. Dunbar

Sacraments and Celebrations; A Collection of Poems, by Arnold M. Brown; published by Special Editions Customized Biographies, Beaverton, Oregon; limited edition available at The Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick.

Reviewed by Bethany M. Dunbar

CRAFTSBURY — Having already mastered careers as a minister, Customs and Immigration officer on the Canadian border and in Ireland, and blueberry farmer, Arnold Brown of Craftsbury can now add published poet to his résumé.

Mr. Brown did not set out to publish a book.  Instead his daughter Gretchen Brown-Boudreau decided to gather up some of the poems he had written for people over the years — at the time of important occasions such as weddings, anniversaries, and baptisms.  The book was meant as a gift for Mr. Brown on his eightieth birthday, and the family found they could not quite make that deadline and needed some help from the author to answer questions about some of the poems before they could be published.

Some were written for someone who had done something thoughtful.  This poem is for Bob Benson:

Almost every Monday evening, Bob comes to set me free.

It’s not from a dungeon dark I’m freed;

Though some might not agree.

For blindness may be a dungeon and to see is, indeed, to be free.

So Bob comes to read to me,

Or, it may be said, to set me free.

I am not fussy what he reads;

This week may be the New York Times,

And next week might be the Post.

We seldom make comparisons of what we like the most.

Boswell’s Life of Johnson has kept us busy this past year,

And Add Merrick, English scholar, has joined us to make things most clear.

One thing we may never know has to do with an orange peel.

Johnson had his pockets full of citrus pulp and skin.

We do not know how or why but we know he did not steal.

I think I have the answer, for in our reading room

We have a cozy wood stove to chase away the gloom.

On top of that old wood stove, we dry our orange peelings

And the aromatic kindling works wonders with our feelings.

So we share our critic acid with our neighbors in our town.

If it was good enough for Johnson,

Then it’s good enough for Brown.

Some of the poems are about his travels and people he met along the way.  One is about processing refugees in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1995.  A question came up.  A family of ten was called, and only nine appeared.  Mr. Brown asks where is the child and is she able to sign:

One word was all that was answered,

from her heart this poor mother said —

And the translator spoke it so softly,

just that one syllable — “Dead.”

The one-word answer strikes Mr. Brown’s heart, making him feel that he had been selfish and gruff.  It’s difficult to imagine.

Anyone who lives in Craftsbury or nearby (or who has lived there in the past several years) will know some of the people described in these poems.

There are commons themes. Coins and spoons and Robert Frost make many appearances.  Mr. Brown clearly enjoys playing with the language.

In a poem named, “To Pat Waterhouse and Dan Risacher, June 15, 2002,” Mr. Brown talks about spoons:

A spoon is for serving; a spoon is for tea,

From primitive time to whatever will be.

A spoon doesn’t threaten, a spoon doesn’t fight.

It’s smooth and it serves; it does things just right.

The tines of a fork or the edge of a knife

Can frighten, and wound, and even take life;

So a spoon (as a noun) is helpful to all,

From the baby’s high chair to the great banquet hall.

But generations ago, to spoon was a verb

That often the elders (at times) would disturb.

But love was expressed, and courtship was known,

As sparking, and spooning, and so we have grown.

An interview or a visit with Mr. Brown might touch on the subject of rare black tomatoes and a woman whose son plays the cello in the New York Philharmonic and who will soon be visiting North Korea.

He is interested in everything, seems to know a little bit about most things and has a remarkable memory. He apologizes for going off on tangents in his conversations, but the tangents are often as engaging as the original subject.

Even though blindness has, as Mr. Brown put it, put him in a dungeon, it has also given him an odd new freedom from worrying about people looking at him.

“It’s like going to a masquerade ball,” he said — in that you can’t see anyone so you sort of have this feeling they can’t see you either.

A little while ago, Mr. Brown was in a waiting room at the V.A. hospital and he heard a lady singing an English sailor’s song that he happened to know:

“Hearts of oak are our ship; Jolly tars are our own men,” she sang.  Mr. Brown asked the woman, from across the waiting room, if she knew what tars were.  She did — sailors whose hands have tar on them to handle the ropes on the boats.

Pretty soon they were singing “Anchors Away” and other sailing songs.  A friend was made.  If Mr. Brown had not been blind, he might have been embarrassed to ask the question or sing out in the middle of a room full of strangers.

Mr. Brown didn’t save copies of his poems, but his wife, Judith, did.  He said people have asked him if he saved his sermons when he served as the minister of the United Church of Craftsbury (Church on the Common), but the truth is he never really wrote them out as manuscripts.

“I never saved anything,” he said.  He used to get up early and write out an outline or notes of what he was going to say, but he didn’t want to be reading from something.  He wanted a rapport with his parishioners, and he certainly had that.

In the same way, the poems were not written for a collection or for the poet.  They were written as gifts and given away.

“People will appreciate — you don’t have to do much — a little showing of interest in their lives,” he said. “We should be listening.”