Universe, Disturbed: A Collection of Original Poetry by Janice Brabaw
I didn't know who Kurt Cobain was.
I hadn't yet heard Liz Phair, The Smiths, or many of the other artists that would have made my adolescence just a tad bit easier. I grew up on a farm six miles outside of the booming metropolis of Hermon, New York (Population 500.) I was a fat, bullied child who ballooned into an obese, depressed teenager. With my hormones and neurotransmitters awry, sometimes the only way I could vent my frustration and pain was in late night sessions of journal writing. Lights off, music on, I'd cry and write and cut my arms with a razor. It was a very difficult time in my life as Borderline Personality Disorder, Social Anxiety, and Depression waged war on my moods and my mind.
Bad adolescent poetry is a rite of passage, something we all write while drowning in a sea of hormones. Maybe song lyrics, maybe a simple flurry of words scrawled in ink amongst the margins of our Mead Composition Books in homeroom. These poems are a bittersweet reflection of my late teens and early twenties when everything was raw and melodramatic. This book reflects who I was between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two (with a few modern selections thrown in at the end).
Excerpts from Universe, Disturbed
Small Town
Moshe
Puddle
Journal Entry, After
Hide And Seek
Rebert, Upstairs, Spring
Reviews of Universe, Disturbed
Ms. Brabaw knows heartbreak. She knows depression. She knows the bleakness of mental illness. And once I read this book I felt like I knew her - and that she knew me as well. This book is for everyone of us who fails to find the words to express our own feelings. Raw, unedited, painfully candid, Ms. Brabaw writes of romantic loss, feminist confusion, sexual angst, rape, suicide attempts -- she has torn open an artery and lures her reader in with such openness and bravery that it is difficult to remember that she is not a friend but a stranger. An excellent read all around! I can't wait until her memoir is published! She is very talented and has a unique voice - bittersweet, honest, and authentic. The new Elizabeth Wurtzel.
--Mike Messina, Rah Rah Brooklyn
[Brabaw] put[s] a lot of passion into [her poetry.] There's humor in there & pathos. And it's not despairing. There's hope & a belief in [her] inner strength. Really good stuff.
--John Berbrich, editor of Barbaric Yawp
Universe, Disturbed by Janice Brabaw {is} a collection of poems written mostly during Brabaw's "raw and melodramatic" high school and college years in rural upstate New York. .... Universe, Disturbed is a wild, emotional roller coaster. Brabaw doesn't hold anything back - she gives you all of it, the highs and the lows, the lost loves, the suicide attempts, the fierce physical lust. I'm not crazy about poor-me literature - I mean, everyone has problems - but this is different. There is a strange blend of euphoria in this work, an unmistakable feeling of power. As she's gobbling down pills or slicing herself with a knife, Brabaw thinks about her parents, her friends, her loved ones - but it doesn't seem to matter. She's on this path of self-destruction, despite everything.
What's weird is the power I mentioned earlier. Towards the end of the book, when I'm exhausted by blistering accounts of mangled love and attempted suicide, we encounter a series of robust songs - a drinking song ("Drink it down ladies/drink it down gents/Another shot for love/ Another shot for hate"), a punk song ("You never loved me/you wanted what I had/You never loved me/such a nasty fucking lad"), a love song ("When your standards are low/You're never lonely"), a Riot Grrl song ("I could kick your ass/But I won't/I could break your heart/But I won't/I could end your life/But I won't"), an angry punk song ("Hid the knife in my pink panties/No one would doubt my sanity"), and some regular songs, five of them "Ooh I've been warned about/ Boys like you with their guitars/Close my eyes and drift into your song/Take me where I want to go/I'm all about the ride..../The ride... the ride....")
Another thing that saves this book from utter bathos is the sarcastic attitude Brabaw has toward herself. When in the mood, she winks at her own rants and furies, finishing off a suicide poem with 'maybe I should just take my damn anti-/depressants," as though the entire episode could have been easily avoided. When you are done with this book, you'll feel as though you've really been through the wringer.
--John Berbrich, editor of Barbaric Yawp
Universe, Disturbed is Disturbing.
Universe, Disturbed is a collection of poetic writings that certainly lives up to its title. Raw, gritty and angry in some places and soft and fine like silk laced with strychnine and resigned in others.
Perhaps the greatest need arguably that people have is to be loved and certainly running neck and neck with that is to be understood. A glimpse into a world so few wish to know intimately and so many of us have unfortunately walked it's depressive paths, is revealed in this collection of in your face memoirs. Although written primarily when the author was quite young, the pains endured are often displayed in an articulate manner far exceeding what one might think possible based on her earthly years. She is certainly reminiscent of both Plath and Sexton.
So many have taken the path which she so aptly writes about but few can capture the despair, the hurts, and the myriad of thoughts the way this promising and very talented writer has. It speaks honestly of the things we perhaps don't want to hear but it also does so in ways that compel the reader on further down into the depths of despair and in so doing, to greater understanding.
I've always felt that people that commit suicide or contemplate it often, really don't want to die, they just want the pain to stop. Having friends and family members who have unfortunately chosen this path, it gives me greater understanding of the phantoms they faced and the demons that plagued their very minds that I imagine they themselves, couldn't articulate so elegantly or as in this authors case at times, so bluntly.
RELAPSE -- December 1998.
Wasting away, unblossomed flower
I lay flat, pressed on the bed
crushed by the sadness
invisible weight upon me
holding me down
the sun dropped below the horizon
on me
I lay here blind in darkness
When did I lose myself?
Get so small in a huge world?
So desolate I can't stand it.
I think there are unfortunately armies of young people now in this world that will relate to this. I also think there are a plethora of people out there who might be older but would gain so much understanding into the trials and tribulations faced by our youth. Particularly with the seemingly constant on going of breaking down morals that is rampant and the ever increasing pressure by the media, to propel children into adult situations and lives through fashion and materialism which is robbing them of what so few now get to have; Childhoods.
I think this is an important addition to great literature and also a portal of sorts for those who can't understand, to have a greater understanding of all those who quite frankly feel, either through peer pressure, rejection, or a medical society that seems increasing only capable of throwing pills at the symptoms instead of addressing the root causes of the actual problems.
If you're depressed because you're penniless, that's one thing. If your depressed because you're picked on, harassed or rejected and treated inhumanly by people you wish only loved you and accepted you, then how many are being shoveled pills to dampen the blow of a senselessly cruel world?
A world where if it bleeds it leads and there are wars and rumors of war and people are more accepted if they wear an in date fashion than they are if they actually have a brain. Not to mention the constant pressure to be like the ones that entertainment bombards us all with daily. Anorexic, bulimic, over weight? Kids have always been cruel but now how many of these things wouldn't exist if there was simply more kindness? That's not to discount the fact that many are truly suffering from mental illness, I myself have PTSD, but how many are cured when they don't have mental issues and they really have, this world can truly suck issues?
Fortunately this author has a voice and an outlet through writing and she excels at it. But for those with no outlet so to speak, I think this author represent the silent voices. Both of those who have moved on and hopefully, those who are currently at risk but with greater understanding, might be saved. Many simply by seeing, that someone feels perhaps exactly the same way, that they do.
-- Chase Von, author of Your Chance To Hear The Last Panther Speak
A thoughtful and insightful book. Ms. Brabaw has done an excellent job of documenting the perils and pitfalls of adolescent and young adult life. Her writing is lyrical, emotional, and a wide range of readers will be able to relate to her subjects. I highly recommend it.
-- Amazon.com
Certainly worth reading Do you ever think you should reveal some of your old journals? Notebooks? Old poems you wrote years and years ago? Things you wrote when you were simply not the same person as you are now?
This is exactly what happened here. At times I feel like I wrote material like this in the past in my (live)journal, but I honestly can't recall much from there, I deleted all my entries! :X
Universe, Disturbed takes me back to my past times, and lets me experience some of the authors thoughts as a teen/young adult. It's a very enjoyable read, and something I'd highly recommend to anyone into poetry!
Some of my favorites from the book are: "A Winter Not as beautiful as Tori's", "Peaceful Night", and "Journal Entry, After."
--Amazon.com
You know, it seems anyone with an even slightly artistic bend was inclined to try their hand at poetry. Some in a Mead Composition book, others in the back of their spiral bound Biology notebook. Fortunately, most of us burned those poems or tossed them in the trash with last year's Social Studies notes. "Universe Disturbed" is just like going back and reading what you wrote back then, or more accurately what you perhaps intended to write, and no doubt thought you wrote.
It runs the gamut, from punk song lyrics, to an exploration of the inner psyche. Ms Brabaw has taken that "[w]rite of passage" and given it back to all of us.
A definite must read for anyone who thinks back to those halcyon days of high school, that never really existed, in the world of unrequited love, bullying, and homework.
--Amazon.com
A well done book by a rare author. Universe, Disturbed may be written by Janice Brabaw, but we all know that at one point in time, we've had our own Universe, Disturbed. Reading Brabaw's accounts of her own live via poetry is an eye-opening experience that leaves you craving more.
I look forward to read more of Janice Brabaw's work in the future. The rumors of a film penned by Brabaw is exciting and I hope to hear more about it soon!
READ THIS BOOK!
--Amazon.com
Great book. Raw and beautiful. The honesty in this work is something you don't find that often. Brings back emotions of growing up and going through all of the rites of passage that makes us who we are. Everyone should read this book, because we've all been there.
--Amazon.com
I will now share one final and more sentimental poem by Janice Brabaw:
Moshe
You were too young to love me
The way I thought I needed to be loved
And in the end I wasn’t enough
Too much
For you
I was too young to love you
The way you thought you needed to be loved
And in the end you weren’t enough
Too much
For me
Dusk does not settle
Without the dust
of our love
whispering across
floorboards
from under the floor.
And every night
Before I sleep
I have to sweep it back
So I can rest again.
This poem sounds like first young, true love that you can never be rid of. Most of us have that experience and I love the repetition of “wasn’t enough/Too much” for each other. I also like the idea of having to sweep back the feelings to rest peacefully at night, it makes the relationship in the poem more pronounced and like a fresh memory than an old wound. This poem avoids being trite on a topic we all read and write about and I think Janice Brabaw does a wonderful job with her choice of words.
--Poethound.com
Janice B. (Janice L. Brabaw) is well into womanhood, but her poems are recollections of her teenage years, years that if true, are not pretty or happy, years in which she attempted suicide, years in which she was raped, years in which romance seemed to fail at every corner. Reading her poetry – sometimes mature, sometimes not – it is difficult to decide if she is, to be blunt, off, or whether to feel sorry for her.
Take for example: Prom Queen
They called my name and for a moment
just a moment, I thought it was real
me, prom queen – my breath caught.
But then, realization
They mock me – they hurt me
make me cry.
People I thought were friends humiliate me
I'll never be prom queen
and they'll always be laughing at me
Leave me alone to freeze in the cold
the fat pretend prom queen.
Oh, yes, there is lots of blood too in her poetry. If you want to understand Brabaw she makes it clear: "Kill me/Throw me on the floor and stab me/ watch me die/in a puddle of my own blood."
Or there is the poem "escape" in which she lays it out again
white hot suicide – quicksilver
and cold steel blades
white pale flesh
and cold spilled blood ----
that drips from the wound
to a scarlet puddle on the floor
Ah, read on, you will find many a harrowing poem, sad notes like dirges, open wounds, confessions of anguish and occasional happy lines because even sad poems look for hope.
She does, (as you will find in the poems), look forward to old age, or bright light, or romance or love, even if it is all weighted down by the heavy specter of unhappiness, misery or death.
Universe Disturbed is by a poet who tells it as it is from her point of view. It is not an easy read because it hits you in the gut – hard.
--Zvi A. Sesling for Ibbetson Press
Hi Janice, Feel I know you from your book, which I read last night. I'm glad I took a tip from J. Berbrich's review in Barbaric Yawp and ordered your fine, powerful original poetry.
Yes, we really could use a new Sappho. Angry and tender and self-focused only to the degree a human needs to be. A lover, not a poser. So maybe you will do it, Grrrl. I hope so. I certainly see the potential.
--Bill Hart
Raw emotion, the author is blunt and completely truthful. There is nothing hidden, the pain, the insecurities, the hope it is right there pleading to be understood.
-- Good Reads.com
"If you get the chance....I encourage you to meet the amazing woman and author that has evolved from the fragile confused teen that once was."
-- Angel Thompson Georges, The Gouverneur Tribune