"Seize," by Brian Komei Dempster

My colleague, the poet Brian Komei Dempster, previously wrote the wonderful collection of poems, “Topaz,” which I posted about on 11/26/13. Now I have read his brand-new poetry collection, “Seize” (Four Way Books, 2020), and it is both gripping and moving. The main focus of these poems is the poet’s son Brendan’s severe physical and cognitive disabilities related to epilepsy and other health conditions, and the complicated, serious, sad, challenging, painful but loving experiences that Dempster, his wife Grace, and Brendan have gone through and are still going through in consequence. The details he gives about their daily struggles, so utterly frustrating, are a transcendent sharing of pain and suffering, as well as of deep parental love. Nothing is sugarcoated, and there are no overt “silver linings” presented, but there are small, meaningful victories along the way. Readers are privileged to see the insights and deep connections this family experiences. The poems are candid and wrenching. Dempster also makes connections between his family’s situation with Brendan, on the one hand, and his family of origin’s experiences with discrimination, denigration, and painful suffering because of their Japanese American identities. (The earlier collection, “Topaz,” is named for one of the internment camps during World War II.) Besides writing here about the content and focus of the poems, I want to testify to the beauty and the power of the poems, and the language that simultaneously captures the unique and the universal.