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A collection of poems written with that undone spirituality you can only get from an irreverent wizard... or a genuinely enlightened hitchhiker.
Brandon Pitts does what few poets nowadays have either the will or courage to do: writing about a cosmos whose luminosity is steadily losing its sparkle. He reinvents the ceiling that we call the heavens and then brings it down to earth for a closer look. And by bringing down the fire, he makes us see the very stars that are an integral part of our skies in a wholly new and reinvigorated way & thus he 'sings our body electric' for us.
Host of the Spoken Word Radio Show, HOWL CIUT 89.5 FM
Tyranny of Love
Seraphim Editions
Reading these poems made me slightly uncomfortable at first, the way I imagine I’d feel reviewing the tape from a security camera hidden up high in dark corner. Theses are poet’s pictures taken through a very clear lens, sharp and true.
User's Guide To A Blank Wall
How Things Got Like This
Gref Editions
Brandon Pitts is a contemporary poet whose unique work defies labels. Impressionist? abstract? emotional? existential? self-aware? -- yes, all of the above. Overall his poetry is personal and experiential and often confessional. Illustrating some of these descriptors, the first section of the book (on poets and poetry) opens with Writer:
“We sit here starving
because I’m a writer
and believe in myself
“She wants certainty
I want life
God, I’m hungry”
Revealing his inner self throughout, Pitts is by turns vulnerable, cynical, straightforward, ironic and humourous. He simply writes to his inspiration, and the resulting lines manifest the feeling, tone, and subject. This produces a deep and powerful authenticity (which is well worth the by-product, some inevitable flights of self-indulgence). His creative vocabulary is expressive and original, and seldom pretentious; but the reader may be challenged by some of his many historical, mythical, and geographical allusions.
Most of these pieces are carefully formatted on the page to show their reading rhythm. The poet demonstrates a good command of structure but is not bound by formality or rhyme. Nor is length any constraint to his inventiveness: Without You has only four lines:
“Like pH balance
Or equilibrium
Without you
I cannot sleep”;
at the other extreme, Lot runs to some 200 lines in five parts.
Pitts’ first published collection, this slim volume contains 35 poems and is illustrated with the writer’s own artistic black-and-white photographs from his world travels. The cover bears a reproduction of David Campbell Wilson’s painting, Woman (which is dramatic but takes some getting used to).
Brandon Pitts is not old in years but is assuredly mature at his craft. He is a writer to read (or better, hear) now, and to watch for in the future.
John Ambury, ATSC
Communications Coordinator
Writers and Editors Network
Member, Canadian Federation of Poets