Kim Fahner : Jesus is a Voyeur, by Bret Crowle

Jesus is a Voyeur, Bret Crowle
Frontenac, 2024

 

 

 

 

Bret Crowle’s debut collection, Jesus is a Voyeur, can haunt you even after you put the book down. Here are a cluster of poems that are firmly rooted in a prairie landscape that serves as the backdrop for a thoughtful poetic consideration of trauma, love, loss, and of resisting and pushing back against the oppression of a strict religious upbringing.

In “Memory’s Tether,” Crowle writes: “My father’s voice is the first I remember…embalming me with all he cherished,” conjuring the notion of decay and preservation, but also suggesting that we do not always want to inherit what our parents cherished as we search for ourselves. In “What Can You Have?”, the speaker’s voice is clear and firm: “You cannot wake up next to your girlfriend without guilt, cannot/have comfort.//You can know that the church will never approve of four breasts/sharing one bed.” In “How Will the Damaged Children See Heaven?”, the tone turns darker, with references to the abuse of children inside churches: “How will the damaged children see heaven?/Will they walk through the pearly gates,/straight into the arms of the Lord?/Will they be told that their lives were simply/just the unlucky draw?” Will the children be—the poet is asking the reader to think carefully here—cast aside without care or recognition? Will the church take responsibility, and if not, who will help them?

These are not light poems in terms of content, and Crowle’s work is an honest and thoughtful exploration of searching out identity, while having to push back against oppressive, patriarchal structures, while engaging in mental health issues, sexual exploration, and childhood trauma. This is not an easy journey, by any means, but one which many of us who have grown up with strict religious upbringings and parents will resonate with as we read. It takes great bravery to write with such a clear and certain voice, and that voice is also one that will haunt the reader.

Crowle does not shy away from dealing with the topic of mental illness in Jesus is a Voyeur, and this is evident in a piece like “Step-by-Step Psychosis Treatment,” which is a found poem taking lines from the FDA label for Aripiprazole. She leaves the numerical list of the poem undone, numbering various side effects and warnings for the patient, and leaving the last one without a cautionary statement. The emptiness of the last numerical point is left for the reader to fill in, in recognition of the idea that each person will respond to a mental health crisis—and treatment modalities—in different ways. In “Benji,” the speaker has suicidal ideations while contemplating a little white dog that “runs across my front lawn.” In “Hypotheticals,” Crowle writes in the style of a screenplay, documenting a stay in hospital to seek treatment for an early psychosis diagnosis. None of these poems are easy to read and think about, but they clearly connect to the theme of searching for self, and of surviving trauma.

Throughout Jesus is a Voyeur, Crowle also poetically documents her exploration of queer sexuality, and of figuring out how desire works and lives in the shadow of the too-strict dogmatic and doctrinal framework of Catholicism. The staccato tango of the conflicting elements of desire and shame is here, too, as could rightfully be expected when a person tries to deconstruct that framework and then create a new, more honest way of being in the world. After the struggle, though, there is a joyous kind of rising through confusion to discovery and acceptance of sexual identity and self. While religious structures are oppressive in terms of sex, what Crowle does is reclaim sexuality, managing to weave spirituality into it all so that the two are less at odds than might seem possible at first glance. The dismantling of the shame happens slowly, and is a lot of work, but that’s where the joy of the collection comes in.

In “Intrusive III,” a poem that celebrates the release of masturbation, the speaker says: “Under the smoke screen of holey quilt, fingers spread, stroke, slip inside/of myself…The statue of Mary on grandma’s dresser/keeps her eyes on me/as I cum.” This poem follows two earlier “intrusive” numbered poems that speak to sexuality, so the little tercet of poems serve as markers on the path to self-discovery within the very structure of the book. Then, in “Ember,” the enjambment of lines and images that rush into one another feels like a poetic embodiment of desire and eroticism. The first line sets the stage: “There’s an ember balancing between fingers” and the ending speaks of only a stub of the cigarette being left behind. In the middle of the piece, the speaker says: “You and the city make love to the night sky. Dissolve./Slip up. Melt into Cassiopeia (a breath in). Of release (a/breath out).” From initial spark of ember to height of climax, and then back to “A scent on breath./A ‘should-not’/buried back home in the yard next to childhood dogs and dogs and hamsters,” the sirens “have died off. Sky and streets and lungs/release.” Here, there are no borders between the need of desire and the satisfaction of fulfilment.

The beauty of Bret Crowle’s Jesus is a Voyeur is that the poet’s voice is one that is clear, has survived the pain of trauma and mental illness, and finds its triumph in a very vibrant way. The setting of the prairies feels exotic to someone who lives in Northern Ontario, so much so that the landscape becomes a character in and of itself. By the end of the collection, there are no divisions here, even though many may have been present before: the conflicts between a curiosity to explore desire and sexuality, and the shame that’s been taught and left behind by a religious structure, are no longer hovering. What’s left in the reader’s mind, at the end of reading Crowle’s debut collection, is a sense of certain rejoicing that the poet’s journey has come to a place of celebration of self-fulfilment. This is not only a tale of surviving so many complex struggles, but of flourishing and blooming brightly afterwards.

 

 

 

 

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her newest book, a novel, is The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024). Her next book of poems, The Pollination Field, will be published by Turnstone Press in 2025. She recently won first place for her CNF essay, "What You Carry," in The Ampersand Review's 2024 essay contest. As well, Kim was named as a finalist for the 2023 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. She is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She may be reached via her website at http://www.kimfahner.com