A Life Without Money: And Other Poems

This is noted poet, author, and activist Perry Brass’s first book of poetry since The Lover of My Soul in 1998. In it, as a poet, Brass reveals so much of himself-his involvement with the world, its triumphs and tragedies, sometimes personal in the loss of so many friends, including the death of his barber and his much-missed building super (who retires); sometimes global, including the hanging in Iran of two teenage boys for “homosexual offenses,” and problems of global climate change in “What We Did Not Know”-his love of the musicality of poetry (over a hundred of his poems have been set to music by many composers), and his sheer love of the textures, rhythms, sounds, and full-fathom-five deep meanings of English. Since he has lived in New York City most of his life, it’s a very urban collection reminding people of poets like Frank O’Hara or Edward Field. There is also an openly “gay” quality to this collection, gay in the sparkling, often poignant, and large meaningfulness of the term, of men and women openly loving each other, of physical and emotional intimacies both concealed and promenaded around. Since we live in a time of celebrity fixation, there are poems to Mike Pence, Lance Armstrong, Greg Louganis, Bernard Madoff, James Franco, as well as Greg Buckley, Jr., a 21-year-old Marine corporal killed in Afghanistan. As Brass says in his author Foreword, “The truth is, although a lot of people are now unfortunately afraid of reading poetry-they feel they just don’t “get” it-poetry itself should not be afraid of anything, even in our very divided times.”
In this collection of poetry, highlighted by the long poem “A Life Without Money,” about gut-level survival and the epiphanies that emerge from it, Brass proves that he is not afraid of anything, except of course people who refuse to be curious about his work.