So Frag & So Bold: Short Poems, Aphorisms & Other Wartime Fun. Randy Brown. Johnston, Iowa: Middle West Press, 2021.

“timing”

The line between a poem
And a joke[1]

The line between poems and jokes runs thin in Randy Brown’s new collection, So Frag and So Bold—but in the best possible way. Brown, in a series of mostly very short poems, quips, and aphorisms, brings the gallows humor of military life to the page in a unique, funny, and moving way all at once. These poems feel both very real and also imaginative, almost like a Greek chorus calling out in intervals from stage left, telling you the real thing you need to know.

Randy Brown is a veteran, a parent, and an astute, wry observer of life, and his mix of playfulness and seriousness makes these poems almost addictive to read. He is immensely funny. His writing is also moving. “Tell me more!” I kept thinking, turning the pages.

This is Veteran Writing. But it is not only Veteran Writing. Brown worries about the longstanding psychological effects of war on its participants and victims; he worries about the effect of war here at home, daily American violence, on his children. He examines the way war has permeated American culture: “our first date / was a war movie.”[2] He wonders why the flags here, in-country, are at half-mast again, the implication being that this seems not exactly right in a place where so many people have recently sacrificed for the dream of peace.

* * *

There is a beautiful awareness and resolve to these poems, an acknowledgement of frailties and failings (as soldiers, as parents, as artists, as people) coupled with the understanding of effort, that when trouble comes for us only effort can get us out of it. Effort is love for one another, and these poems, brief and pithy as they are, express an understanding that in the end, that’s what we’ll have.

* * *

Many of the poems in So Frag and So Bold take turns playing with punctuation and modern forms of communication, which is both unexpected and fun, and also very moving, timely, and real. Consider

“exclamation”

What time to be alive!
What a time to be alive.

What a burden to place upon a single mark
of punctuation.[3]

or:

“Jesus texts”

I don’t care about
who you love

I do care about
who you hate

😊[4]

There’s an odd poetic grace to the smile emoji, which is actually in the book—the hilarious thought of Jesus sending a text message. Who is Jesus texting?! Mary Magdalene? Peter? Judas? No, it seems like he is texting a modern person (text me, Jesus!!), and underneath the simplicity of the words in this very brief poem (the smile emoji underlining our often shallow online interactions, but which are underlined with some form of true conviction) there is both admonition here, and also an affection for those who have been hated. There’s that compassion I have been talking about.

* * *

In So Frag & So Bold, there are war poems, and there are also not-war poems. Or, Brown suggests that every poem may be a war poem. I was particularly moved by “crossing the line”:

When you start writing war
as an escape[5]

Brown asks repeatedly: How do we escape, and what are we escaping from? There are soldiers escaping mortars in war. There are kids escaping school shootings here at home. There are people escaping one another. Why are we escaping from life, when we only have one chance at it (maybe) and it should be everything, all on its own? Brown writes:

“the urge”

Sometimes I have to fight
to say I love you
to everyone I can[6]

But these poems are an “I love you,” a love for life in all its messiness, its figuring-out. What is poetry but a great figuring-out? Brown gets it, and embraces it. We’re not gonna figure this out all the way, his beautiful poems say. But we are here on earth, and we are going to try. In his Ecclesiastical final poem, Brown acknowledges that “all this has happened before, & all this will happen again.”[7] It’s one of those realities that’s a little bit of a threat, but luckily, even more of a promise.

* * *

I think the poem that moved me almost to tears is “on war poetry”:

We write the war/
the war writes us

even the ones
who got away clean[8]

There’s such an intelligent awareness here, because no one really gets away clean. Who gets away clean from war? Who’s not left sometimes flinching, or worrying about phone calls or knocks on the door, or feeling a million miles away from people they love?

My 14-year-old (military-kid) son said it most plainly, perhaps. He looked at the book’s cover and figured it out faster than I did. Which is maybe saying something about how none of us get away clean.

He said immediately, almost in awe: “That grenade is a heart.”

Andria Williams is editor-in-chief of Wrath-Bearing Tree literary journal, which publishes poetry, stories, and essays by those affected by military, social, and economic violence. She is also founding editor of The Military Spouse Book Review, which publishes essays on books, literature, and culture for women and women-indentifying people in military life. Her novel, The Longest Night (Random House, 2016) focuses on an army family whose lives intersect with the United States’ only fatal nuclear reactor accident, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, January of 1961. The Longest Night was Amazon’s featured debut novel for January of 2016 and was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great Writers” pick for that year. A Booklist starred review called it “Luminous…utterly absorbing and richly rewarding.” She is grateful to everyone who has helped make the war-writing community vibrant, astute, literary, and reflective.

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Header Image: Grenade Range, Camp Pendleton, California, 2020 (Cpl. Jason Monty).

Notes:

[1] Randy Brown, “timing,” in So Frag & So Bold: So Frag & So Bold: Short Poems, Aphorisms & Other Wartime Fun (Johnston, IA: Middle West Press, 2021), 7.

[2] Brown, “‘Aliens’ (1986),” in So Frag & So Bold: So Frag & So Bold, 15.

[3] Brown, “exclamation,” in So Frag & So Bold: So Frag & So Bold, 19.

[4] Brown, “Jesus texts,” in So Frag & So Bold: So Frag & So Bold, 22.

[5] Brown, “crossing the line,” in So Frag & So Bold: So Frag & So Bold, 28.

[6] Brown, “the urge,” in So Frag & So Bold: So Frag & So Bold, 23.

[7] Brown, “all this will be yours:,” in So Frag & So Bold: So Frag & So Bold, 58.

[8] Brown, “on war poetry,” in So Frag & So Bold: So Frag & So Bold, 48.