Mark Jay Brewin, Jr (at The Rumpus)

The good folks at The Rumpus ran my interview with sharp debut poet Mark Jay Brewin, Jr, and here's our excerpted section that might be of particular interest to readers of The Fine Delight.

Rumpus: The fascinating images of “Our Lady of Mount Carmel”—that church festival with “spilled beer” and “[a] feast day of hangovers and rosaries for sale”—are reflected in a later poem, when the narrator quips that “The guilt one acquires in Catholic school lectures/ isn’t readily forgotten.” How do you envision Catholicism and your family’s Sicilian background within your poetry, which moves far beyond those topics (from New Zealand to Carbondale, tension between brothers)?

Brewin, Jr.: Whoa, sugar. This is a heavy question. Forgive me, because I am sure this is going to be way too long…my apologies in advance.

I was raised in the Church at the behest of my maternal grandfather. He is a pillar of his parish, does the readings and helps balance the finances, and I am sure much more than that. My father (for most of my childhood) would openly admit that he didn’t believe in God, and if there was one he sure as hell wasn’t in his court; and my mother was spiritual but kept the church at a distance citing her own sins and sacrifice, but was never specific and open about it for the longest time. One of the most important academic opportunities I had, which helped sharpen my love/hate relationship with Catholicism, was my attendance at St. Augustine’s College Preparatory School. Every Wednesday morning we had Mass in the school gym (although the school preached academic rigor and development, I believe a large portion of students were pushed through because of their athletic talents or parents’ financial contributions), where I was elected Minister of the Cup and sang in the choir off and on, depending on if I wanted to skip a particular class or not for practice. Most students half-heartedly stood or sat, took the Eucharist, sang the Alma Mater, while afterward I got to finish off the chalice of blessed-wine-turned-blood and walked off to Church History class with a major buzz.

Cartoon Bible adventures on TV before CCD classes, First Holy Communion, and Confirmation were all things I grew up with. Every Christmas Eve, at my grandparents’ house, we said a prayer for our dear departed and threw back shot after shot of Sambuca Romana. Beyond all of these emotionless, thoughtless, routine actions I had growing up (memories of the Beef-n-Beer Bash at Our Lady of Pompeii Parish or, yes, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Festival—both moments for secular interaction more so than spiritual growth), when I got to Elon University (my undergraduate alma mater), I joined the Service Learning Community, which stressed volunteer work, community outreach, and a majority of our work was done via church groups. To see these real moments of fellowship, helping others, I was able to actually glimpse Catholicism for the first time in its true, full form. The real ideologies and practices of the Church in action.

All while this is going on—remember, I’m the oldest son in a Sicilian family, who’s gone and jumped ship—family members of mine are both happy for my academic successes but are constantly afraid I am “forgetting” the family, wiping them out of my life. There is the seed that starts it all. I’m home from university for the holidays, Midnight Mass at Christmas, plenty of food, drinking, prayers and remembering what we’ve lost—then back again to working at a retirement community where the elderly may or may not be visited by family (ever), where the people walking into the soup kitchen that morning didn’t have a holiday, gifts to share, anyone to be with. And yet, they are hopeful, or if not hopeful, then at least willing and wanting human contact. And they are happy, praising God that at least they are alive, thankful for the Church, when most of my interactions with it were filled with teenagers falling asleep on a set of bleachers.

My oldest kinfolk spoke of church, these festivals, get-togethers as moments for little thanksgivings, for asking forgiveness, getting to the basics. The same words spoken over and over again, trusting in its power and promise, as a Sicilian family turns to the power and promise of each family member, passing on the same ideas, turning in to itself before ever turning away from it. And I did. I left them. I left the Church, but I never left the idea of helping and comforting anyone I can.

Constantly, I am always questioning if I should have stayed home (but my purest memories and realizations are only found with distance), or if I should have stayed with the Catholic Church, but I’ve seen too many people—just my small personal experience, I don’t want to assume or say that all or even the majority of church-goers don’t practice what they preach—turn a tin ear to the plight of another. The Catholic Church, my Sicilian family, and guilt that I am always answering to the fact that I am a white, privileged, lucky male who believes in something (God, if you will), who can’t help but find nostalgia and admiration for those religious practices, who can’t help but love and miss and venerate his family (but only with a proper space to focus on it), who can’t help but feel guilty for the fact that too much has worked out so smoothly, perfectly (fine-tuned as if my cards were already dealt) in my life. Based on the weight of everything, I envision the role of these two enormously important elements of my core as a catalyst, something I will forever try to reconcile.