Poems, New and Selected

Roger Nash is a philosophy professor at Laurentian University and the
author of Night Flying.

A recurring task for Brett is to bear witness to suffering: to five who
perished in a fire; to a man dying of lung cancer. The tragic events are
told in a quietly unfolded narrative that anchors consistently developed
and telling imagery. With ethical astringency, the speaker is left at
the periphery, the witness’s history subordinated to what is
witnessed. However, Brett’s concern for others is at times subverted
by a Hobbesian vision of life that puts the self and its needs at the
centre. Then concern for others becomes an inexplicable add-on to
personal survival or is reduced to sexual power and satisfaction. One
looks forward to seeing this tension resolved in Brett’s subsequent
work.

Brett has written some fine love poems. Love, celebrated with
Chaucerian gusto, has its glittering fever caught in a delicate
Chinoiserie of Poundian language. Yet here, too, there is tension. In
later poems, Brett becomes self-conscious about sexual desire,
objectifying the woman, disassociating from the flow of feeling. Here he
finds the body solely tawdry and disgusting, and sinks at times into
pornography.

Brett is one of those rare poets who, like Robinson Jeffers, explores
necessity and the limits to the will. Cosmic planning is denied, the
bombing of Dresden reduced to a mechanism. Again, there is a tension
within Brett’s work. From the extreme position that one can purpose
nothing, he moves to the other extreme, that one can romantically
purpose the impossible and climb all mountains.