Inventory

Dionne Brand

Image | BOOK COVER: Inventory by Dionne Brand

Inventory is a book-length poem that shows Dionne Brand at simultaneously her most incisive and her most generous-hearted. In this book, which fellow poet George Murray dubbed "one of the single most perfect books of poetry written in this century," Brand catalogues the state of the world at the turn of the millennium, from the invasion of Iraq to Hurricane Katrina. In the end, it is the kindness of human nature that redeems us.
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From the book

Observed over Miami, the city, an orange slick blister,
the houses, stiff haired organisms clamped to the earth,
engorged with oil and wheat,
rubber and metals,
the total contents of the brain, the electrical
regions of the atmosphere, water
coming north, reeling, a neurosis of hinged
clouds,
bodies thicken, flesh
out in immodest health,
six boys, fast food on their breath,
luscious paper bags, the perfume of grilled offal,
trough-like cartons of cola,
a gorgon luxury of electronics, backward caps,
bulbous clothing, easy hearts

From Inventory by Dionne Brand @2006. Published by McClelland & Stewart.

Author interviews