;

The tirle of Pam Brown's My Lightueight

Intentions is simultaneously self-effa.ing, d.r..Iprive, and ironic. With its short lines and obsessions
with_the quotidian, her poetry might appear light_
weighr (and at 22 pages this pamphlet-ii), b,.r"h.,
approach ultimarely justifies its subjects. Because
Brown's poems often extend to three or four pages,
a pamphlet of rhis size seems insufficien, grotr.rJon
which to come ro rerms with her work.
Most of Brown's poems rev ar high speed yet
take their time in reaching their desrinari,ons. For

Brown, "writing a poem" becomes a "shambling

contingency", an act fraught with uncertaintf
Because she highlights the means of the journey
(the process of composition), this leisurely manic
pace usually requires several pages ro saris$/.
Therefore, a short poem like "A howling in favour
of failures...", despite some srrong lines, relies too
much on its punchJine ending, a racric that gives
more pleasure when the poet has established a larger
in which ro roam.
Although Brown sometimes resembles a late-

space

generation New York School poet ("customised /

fragments organizing a sranza / in public!", "disappointed by I my cenrury's / pragmarics, / I declari /
the age of riesling") or a Sydney poer ("even the
rubbish / appears arrificial", "o no it's / an index of
anecdote"), she is always a humorous, iconoclastic,
and observanr one: "taking so long / ro write the
book -_l only to be / remaind...d", "rhe glory /
white fringes / of the green & red / umbrellai /
sussurare". Despite her affinities, Brown has developed her own blend of disillusionmenr, renderness,
social criticism, and self-criticism, as in 'Miracles',
one of the most remarkable of the seven poems in
the pamphlet:
Condemned to fideliry,
they trail along

blindly

- into ennui,

and into boringness,

assembling

dull catastrophes
in the shadowiest recess
where gems

could
glow...
Because of her refusal ro "rrail along blindly,,,
Brown's poems do glow. They just need a wider
expanse in which ro shine.