Mr. Braden’s newest collection of poems, A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood, aspires toward an intellectual coherence unique among contemporary poetry. Symbols, motifs, and themes recur throughout the volume, and as a consequence, the reader frequently returns to poems already read. He employs them to elucidate works encountered later in the book, and in so doing, illumines these earlier pieces with the intellectual contours encountered in the later poems.

Braden approaches the enterprises of inter-poem dialogue and intra-textual unity with rigor. Nearly half of the pieces compiled in A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood return to the title “Taboo Against the Word Beauty.” Each piece is pondered and penned from a different perspective—One an “invocation,” one “troubidorian,” one “elegiac,” and one “with a flintlock rifle triggered repeatedly,” to name only a few of the “versions” by which the poet explores and re-explores this title.

This endeavor of reconsideration and perspectival revision resembles studies in light and form, such as those frequently practiced in the visual arts. Monet’s haystacks, water-lilies, or House of Parliament series exemplify the aesthetic potential of such studies in “version.” Unfortunately for the reader excited by the prospect of a poetic series that studies the power of intellectual perspective to refine and reform a single motif, Braden’s “Taboo Against the Word Beauty” poems prove hermetic. The reader struggles to interpret a single, isolated poem, let alone the assumed dialogue between the many versions of “Taboo.”

As a case in point, let us consider the book’s opening poem, “Taboo Against the Word Beauty, Invocation.” The piece evokes a “slutty possum dozing in my crawlspace” (1). The relationship of this possum to beauty, let alone the invoked “Muse” that dictates “tricks of the trade” is puzzling. How this possum (or even the muse) relates to the scarred man or detached Walgreen’s window of the “Epistolary” version (or for another of numerous examples, the “Elegaic” version’s contention that “If a body can prove the soul exists, then flesh is narrative”) is, quite simply, confounding (3, 14).

The various iterations of “Taboo Against the Word Beauty” do little to utilize their stated dispositions in order to expose the perspectival nuances of either beauty, or its taboo. According to Sandra Alcosser, these “Taboo” poems present “a sequence of sonnets, a sequence of taboos so compelling that a reader cannot help but be seduced by the brilliant symmetry, the Keatsian capability of this poet’s meditation.” Too often, however, these “Taboo” poems elude the intellectual, emotional, and/or aesthetic symmetry toward which they seemingly aspire.

The comparison to Keats, of course, proves hyperbolic, though Braden must be praised for his willingness to confront one of the great taboos of contemporary poetry. Rather than structure his book around gimmick or tired claims of avant-garde experimentalism, Braden pursues, through his “Taboo” poems, the intellectually and aesthetically vibrant project of perspective study.

Though Braden rejects the taboo of gimmick, the accolades printed on the back of his book (such as those quoted above by Alcosser) embrace a different contemporary poetic taboo—that of formal misappropriation. The “Taboo” poems resemble sonnets only insofar as they possess 14 lines. They lack rhyme, meter, and the structure of logical progression that distinguish the sonnet—both in its formal constraints and its rhetorical potentialities—from other forms of verse. In light of the sonnet’s history and its unique poetic capacities, it appears inappropriate to regard any poem of 14 lines as a sonnet. To regard the “Taboo” poems as sonnets is disingenuous to actual sonneteers.

A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood contains many poems in addition to the “Taboo” sequence. These other poems, like the “Taboo” series, engage in dialogue with other works within the book. Distinctive symbols such as “smudge-pots” and a reconsideration of literary ornithology re-appear within multiple poems. More obviously, the theme of “elegy” recurs with an intensity bordering on obsession. Yet like the “Taboo” series, these other poems often prove opaque. References to “metallic scent of ancient salmon” and the revivification of sokeye in the poem “Refinishing” does little to nuance the poem’s initial (and intriguing) question “And why not approach figuratively the past as metaphor ingrained in the here and now” (30)? Similarly, the imagery of “thawing pooling” blood and “maggots percolating” in the piece “Reversal” seem to contribute little of interpretive consequence to the poem’s somewhat trite conclusion: “no gesture once committed can be taken back” (15).

Despite their imagistic vividness, these poems appear to communicate little of intellectual or emotional substance. They are as inscrutable as the volume’s stated desire to “calculate the damage we require of ourselves.” Nevertheless, some poems within A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood glisten with masterful aesthetic power. “The Hemlock Tree,” for example, is truly admirable. The poem displays emotional and intellectual power, thread across a narrative that is strange but strangely compelling. Its images are complicated but not opaque, potent but not the privileged reserve of the author’s mind. As a result, it succeeds in evoking a state of true complexity in which tragedy, irony, and indifference intertwine. Like “The Hemlock Tree,” the grotesque two-part poem “The Venison Book,” “Litany Ending with a Taste of Nectar,” and the seven-part pseudo-epic “Elegaic” stand forth as complex but compelling examples of Braden’s ability to balance “elegy and affirmation” in his balance of naturalism and lyricism.

Overall, A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood represents a compelling volume of poetry, even if some of its works are burdened by hermetic symbolism. The poet’s aspiration to produce a unified book of poetry, rather than a fragmented redaction of poems, is truly admirable. For this reason, Braden’s poetry stands as a refreshing (and rewarding) contrast to the dominant tendencies of contemporary lyric poetry. Though I have critiqued its moments of obscurity, I suspect that Braden’s work would resonate far more strongly with me if I shared his language of “rural life” and the “Pacific Northwest.” Although Braden’s reservoir of symbols and sympathies does not always embrace the reader who lacks fluency in the idiom of the poet’s experience, it would appear that he does not write in a private language accessible only to his own mind. As such, Braden may be said to evade one of the greatest taboos against beauty rampant in the poetry of today.