The Growth of a Man

Review of Martin Jude Farawell’s Oddboy (USA: Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019)
By Ally Chua

Martin Jude Farawell has an impressive body of work spanning two decades—his poems have been published in literary journals and anthologies, with poetry readings both in America and abroad. Yet Oddboy is Farawell’s first full-length poetry collection. It is this long gestation that gives Oddboy its gravitas and strength. This is a collection that looks at how childhood trauma, adult regret, and eventually love influence a man over a lifetime. The opening epigraph, a quote from poet Galway Kinnell, reflects this thesis—“I am trying to learn: time suffered is not necessarily time destroyed.”

Oddboy begins with an ambitious poem, “The Pine Barrens,” that makes up the entirety of the first section. Its first sentence invokes the image of a noose—"A rope hangs from a branch,” before the next few lines reveal that it is a boy’s childhood swing, “too thin for a man’s weight.” It is a somber start—the connection between a child’s swing and a noose hinting at the childhood violence that Farawell will expand on later. From there, “The Pine Barrens” takes the narrative arc of a grown man traipsing through the woods of his childhood memories. Farawell reminisces about watching bonfire gatherings in the dark, the drunken rages of his father, and explorations with his uncle Frank, more of a father figure than Farawell’s actual dad ever was. Yet this is not a hero’s epic, but a journey of quiet introspection. Consider the vulnerability expressed in these lines: 

I have always stepped silently, like a deer
who freezes at a twig’s break,
who holds still long enough
to be mistaken for a tree.

[…]

I was lying when I said
I have grown
to know my frailty;
I knew that
when a boy.

“The Pine Barrens” is a Wordsworthian prelude to the themes explored in this collection. The use of narrative here helps shape the poem despite its length. It unfolds like a chapter prologue, not drawn out, but a necessary introduction to the persona’s backstory, such that the confessional vulnerability that Farawell shows later can be fully understood. As a poem, it is powerful in its own right while encapsulating the collection’s themes. Its ending reiterates the need for introspection: “I must begin / the long hike back / to where I first entered these woods / as a boy, and bring / a deer’s attentiveness / to this human life.”

Oddboy is loosely divided into five sections, and the motif of the woods is one that persists through the collection. The way that this motif is employed differs when it appears in poems related to Farawell’s childhood, and when it features in poems written from an adult’s perspective. In poems about Farawell’s childhood, the woods is depicted as a place of hiding. We learn that Farawell has experienced abuse at the hands of both parental figures. It is not surprising thus to see the woods depicted as a place of refuge:  

Returning to the faces
that had worried away the morning,
I’d lift up the bucket,
heavy with harvest,
and be forgiven for not being lost
but only gone blueberry picking.

(from “Ocean Gate”)

In contrast, when Farawell writes about the woods as an adult, the poem is often a rumination about the decay of life and the life of decay. In “South Mountain,” Farawell describes how dead tree trunks are set upon by nuthatches, which drill the trunks for insects, and in that space the “odor of decay is as pungent as sex.” He brings to life the vitality in the process of decomposition. How it is not a tragedy, but an unassuming part of nature. Or in “Thanksgiving,” where the passing of another year is described elegantly through the wilting of milkweed flowers—“Gape-mouthed, milkweed / surrender their last syllables / to November / bracken.” By comparing the two types of poems, one can see the growth of the man, and thus the poet; it reflects Farawell’s journey of self-discovery from refugee to observer, noticing changes on  the way that would have previously passed unobserved. The forest is now more than a hiding place. It is a place of renewal, premised on a quiet acceptance of the cycle of life.

In other chapters, the topic of physical abuse recurs. Farawell writes about the dread of waiting—waiting for fights in the night to end, waiting to be beaten, waiting out the beatings of other siblings he cannot help. Poetry about abuse runs the risk of feeling one-dimensional—it may convey suffering as an end in itself. Farawell, however, avoids this pitfall by acknowledging the shades of grey in abusive relationships—that an abuser is capable of concern, that a sufferer has agency in defiance. One of Oddboy’s more outstanding poems is “What Does Not Pass.” In this poem, Farawell’s father, sensing Farawell’s distress one evening, comes out onto the porch to ask if everything is alright. What makes this poem powerful is both Farawell’s humane depiction of his father—the father handles empathy like a rusty tool he is afraid to use—and his steadfast knowledge that this empathy is not an absolution of his father’s sins:

All this was behind us
when you stepped out onto the porch,
looking shy.
I’d been sitting out there for hours,
trying not to make any noise.
I turned my head so you wouldn’t see I was crying
and whispered, “Everything’s fine.”

(from “What Does Not Pass”)

Farawell’s poems are not given to flashy expressions of images, forms, or rhythms. His stanzas are free form, his modus operandi is blank verse, he often repeats crucial words, and the crafted clarity of the language lets the strength of his voice shine through. There is, occasionally, a wry sense of humor displayed—"During a Funeral” is a study in deadpan levity—that provides a break in the solemnity between chapters (“the lucent dove breaks free... and dive-bombs the heads of the bereaved / with perfect, stained-glass shits”). Only in certain poems centered around his wife and child does the poetic form change—the lines are dropped on the page, there is playfulness in format, almost as if the theme of love adds a lightness to Farawell’s work: 

Little Shaun drops his diaper, runs
toward the tide pool
as if running toward
his mother, bends to embrace it, laughs, so hard
it sounds like choking on water. “Zat?” he asks
of sea anemone. “Zat?” he asks
of everything, wanting its name, his curiosity
ready to laugh
            at near drowning.

(from “Bodies of Water”)

This lightness gives Oddboy a redemptive arc—here is someone who has gone through hell, but has found solace in people who love him. Here is someone who refuses to perpetuate the father’s sins, but makes deliberate decisions to break the cycle. Earlier, I mentioned that poetry about abuse can feel one-dimensional, and that Farawell deftly avoids that pitfall. A second way that Farawell avoids this pitfall is through asserting boundaries and demonstrating the ability to move on—there is no self-blame in his poems, or guilt wrongly inflicted onto the next generation. Instead, Farawell writes that his children will not experience abuse at his hands (“Sometimes the closest / we can come / to prayer / is kneeling in the kitchen / to sponge away / the jam / tracked across the floor / by the children / we will / not we will not / not ever / beat.”)

The last section, Genesis: A Sequence of Poems, was first published as a chapbook in 1995. It has a different tone. Here, the confessional voice takes a backseat, and an earthy and human retelling of a creation myth emerges instead. Juxtaposed against the other sections, the reader is able to see the evolution of a poet’s voice. Genesis possesses visceral imagery and grand themes. Oddboy is quieter, more contemplative. We can see this difference immediately at the start of both collections—“The Pine Barrens,” as mentioned earlier, is not a hero’s epic, but a journey of quiet introspection. In contrast, “Prologue,” the first poem of Genesis, adopts a mythic register and setting:

The mother of all living was perfect
and happy in her nakedness
before she turned the apple over.
The serpent was a worm in the fruit she bit
to whom her body was only body and
windshook, subject
to the fruit tree’s fall.

This final sequence picks up on a subtle exploration of faith that runs through the whole collection, in which God, sin, and redemption, are often alluded to. One can also see the mode of confession as decidedly Catholic in nature. Yet Oddboy does not read as an overt exploration or denunciation of faith. Rather, there is something subtly spiritual about this collection—the cycle of life and death, the woods as refuge, the confessional, the themes of love. I am not sure if that subtlety is carried off successfully in Genesis. The change from confessional to scriptural, from subtle background to overt mythos, gives an oddly detached tone to a otherwise intensely personal collection. That said, I recognise that how one responds to Genesis is a matter of personal preference, based on whether one agrees with Farawell’s structuring of his collection as a move from the ordinary present to a mythic beginning. More importantly, I find that the inclusion of Genesis, an earlier work by Farawell, provides an important glimpse into his evolving poetics.

In short, Oddboy is a book that can only be written by someone who has lived a lifetime—with its regret and reflection, introspection and inspection. It is refreshing to read a collection in which the protagonist is not grappling mightily with his oppressors—the battle is done in Oddboy and so what is left on the page is tested and true vulnerability. It is admirable that Farawell bares everything on the page without artifice or guile. It is this honesty and lack of showboating that gives this book its strength.


Ally Chua is a Singaporean poet. She works in the communications industry, and writes when she's not replying emails within seven working days. She is the 2019 Singapore Unbound Fellow for New York City, and a member of local writing collective /s@ber. Ally has been published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cordite Poetry Review, and and Lammergeier Magazine. An avid solo traveler and reader, Ally finds inspiration from a wide variety of sources, including her travels, Richard Siken's words, the lyrics of Brian Fallon, and zombie video games.