A Magnificent, Sentient Beast of a Book: E. Briskin's Orange

E. Briskin makes a stunning poetry debut with his new release, Orange, which is more of a scavenger hunt of intertwining consciousness than a simple book. Before I critique a thing, I want to reinforce that the nature of poetry is to liquify and fill the mold of whoever might read and interpret it. The guided nature with which E. Briskin brings us into his post-dog-mortem world of footnotes and winding reading paths does not negate the identification process that makes poetry so near and dear to us. It enhances the experience.

I made my way through the maze of Briskin’s stream of consciousness in two different ways. First, following the numbers, and then again by reading the traditional way. Regardless of how you tackle this beautifully written and incredibly thoughtful book, you’ll want to have your phone, tablet, or laptop nearby. Briskin explains some of his most straying thoughts in the footnotes, but I still found myself dropping my book into my lap to Google things – like what the sculpture “Greyhounds Playing” by William Hunt Diedrich looked like – to fully understand the depth and brilliance of what was being said at a given moment. Briskin also sends you careening back and forth through the pages, as some footnotes refer to earlier or later ones. As you search wildly through his writings, you begin to see the spider web of thought weaving tightly together. I absolutely loved the scavenger hunt feel of this book, particularly for the thrill that this kind of hunt provides for me. The game of this narrative kept me active and engaged from cover to cover, then back and forth again. Wandering through the Orange labyrinth made me feel lost in a good way. Briskin pulls you into the speaker’s emotions, spins you around, and leaves just enough clues for you to find your way back to the heartbeat of this work.

The evident decision to write switchbacks into this story is one that lends to the shifting nature of the multiple themes laced throughout. The fluidity of gender, physical existence, and even breed and species is evident on every page, in a way that feels effortless and thoughtful rather than confusing. There is a purpose to every bend that Briskin takes in this regard. We are asked to consider all beings in this book as just that: beings. This, Briskin’s speaker appears to assert, is what equalizes all of us, human and dog alike. One of the most striking and thought-provoking moments in the story is when the speaker considers a group of intimidating men staring at them, and realizes that if the men were dogs, they would rush over to pet them. The shock of this realization dismantles the belief system that most of us spend our lives learning, navigating, and resenting. Gender roles, power dynamics, social constructs, and more are all dismantled with the delightful consideration of our furry companions and how they factor into our very human lives. Briskin smashes the boundaries of “black and white” thinking by making all of the simple things grey, and all of the grey things simple.

Briskin uses gender in a delightfully playful way throughout this poetry collection. There are very few moments that we are given even a glimpse of the dog in question. The dog holds a fluidity when it comes to gender, breed, and size. Briskin brilliantly uses more tangible things like physicality and appearance to cartwheel and backflip over binary-conforming pronoun use, and in this way, declares two deeply human truths. The first of which, of course, is that bonds like the ones we form with our animal companions are everlasting. This particular point reminded me of Dog Songs by Mary Oliver, where Oliver considers her many dogs’ lives and how their existence and bond with her had changed her own existence. But the second truth is one uniquely conjured in consideration with a dog’s physicality: gender is totally and completely a social construct. This, of course, is not a new idea. But attaching such human things to a dog, and vice versa, is one of the key functions that drives Briskin’s narrative and allows him to deconstruct such a classic duality. Briskin has managed to wrestle the human-dog connection into a new and refreshing form, proving conclusively that old dogs can, in fact, learn new tricks.

All in all, I will be revisiting this book not simply because there are a dozen different ways to explore within it (which there are) but because one could read it the same way a dozen times and find new things hidden in the language every time. More than that, as a dog lover myself, the shock of grief surrounding the passing of a pet and the ways in which it manifests in this book speak volumes. Briskin masterfully navigates the minefield of cliché grief portrayal and comes out the other side with a magnificent, sentient beast of a book that encompasses the abstract of what it means to mourn the loss of a pet. Pick up a copy of Orange if you wish to laugh, cry, learn wildly interesting dog facts that will wow the guests at your next gathering, or if you simply wish to read a piece of quality literature. If one of the above is the case, Orange will not disappoint you.